Netforce: Breaking Point [030-011-4.5]

Synopsis:

In the year 2010, computers are the new superpowers.
Those who control them control the world.  To enforce the Net Laws,
Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency within the FBI:
the Net Force.

Reeling from a shattered personal life, Net Force Commander Alex
Michaels is informed that top secret information from a joint Air
Force-Navy venture has been accessed and downloaded.  The research
involves an atmospheric weapon with the capability to drive half a
country into madness using low frequency wave generation.  Now the
technology has fallen into the wrong hands- and testing has begun... A
powerful examination of America's defense and intelligence systems of
the future.
           

NOVELS BY TOM CLANCY

The Hunt for Red October Red Storm Rising Patriot Games The Cardinal of
the Kremlin Clear and Present Danger The Sum of All Fears Without
Remorse Debt of Honor Executive Orders Rainbow Six

SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare

CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND STEVE PIECZENIK

Tom Clancy's Op-Center Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Mirror Image Tom
Clancy's Op-Center: Games of State Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Acts of War
Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Balance of Power Tom Clancy's Op-Center: State
of Siege Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Divide and Conquer

Tom Clancy's Net Force Tom Clancy's Net Force: Hidden Agendas Tom
Clancy's Net Force: Night Moves Tom Clancy's Net Force: Breaking
Point

CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND MARTIN GREEN BERG

Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Politika Tom Clancy's Power Plays: ruthless. 
com Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Shadow Watch

NONFICTION

Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship Armored Cav: A Guided
Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an
Air Force Combat Wing Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary
Unit Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force Carrier: A
Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier Into the Storm: A Study in Command
(written with General Fred Franks) Every Man a Tiger (written with
General Charles Homer) Tom Clancy's Net FORCE

BREAKING POINT

Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieezenik

Written by Steve Perry

BERKLEY BOOKS.  NEW YORK

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that
this book is stolen property.  It was reported as "unsold and
destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher
has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents
are either the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

TOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE: BREAKING POINT

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Netco Partners

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley edition / October 2000

All rights reserved.

Copyright 2000 by Netco Partners NET FORCE is a registered trademark of
Netco Partners, a partnership of Hollywood.com, Inc."  and C.P.
Group.

The NET FORCE logo is a registered trademark of Netco Partners, a
partnership of Hollywood.com, Inc."  and C.P. Group.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without
permission.

_ For information address' The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc.  World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com

ISBN: 0-425-17693-2

BERKLEY

Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division
of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

BERKLEY and the "B" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam
Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 987654321

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We'd like to acknowledge the assistance of Martin H. Greenberg, Larry
Segriff, Denise Little, John Heifers, Robert Youdelman, Esq..  and Tom
Manon, Esq.; Mitchell Rubenstein and Laurie Silvers at Hollywood.com,
Inc.;

the wonderful people at Penguin Putnam Inc."  including Phyllis Grann,
David Shanks, and Tom Colgan.  As always.

we would like to thank Robert Gottlieb of the William Morris Agency,
our agent and friend, without whom this book would never have been
conceived, as well as Jerry Katzman, Vice Chairman of the William
Morris Agency, and his television colleagues.  But most important, it
is for you, our readers, to determine how successful our collective
endeavor has been.

"And who wrote the tune, you dare to ask?

You know who wrote it-it's the Devil's own music, hot and sweet, and
surely damned will be the man who turns his ear toward it."

--SEAN PATRICK O'MAHONEY

PART ONE

All Polities Are Local

PROLOGUE

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 Daru, China

The sun rose from the gray sea and cast a fitful light upon the
wrinkled features of Old Zang where he sat on the weathered bench
outside the house, leaning forward slightly on his cane.  He was often
up with the sun these days to enjoy the dawn, knowing he would not have
so many more he could afford to waste them.  But instead of making him
sad, the thought made him angry.

This day seemed somehow sharper than normal.  His clouded sight was
clearer, his hearing keener, and even the wan rays upon his skin felt
somehow more intense than usual.

Old Zang had but recently moved to the village of Daru.  A mere dozen
years or so ago, a blink of an eye for a man his age, he had been
forced to leave his real home, which was flooded by the monstrous dam
project that forever altered the face of China's rivers.  At
ninety-four, he had outlived his wife, several of his children, and
even a few of his grandchildren, and he did not like it here, staying
with one of the grandchildren he had not outlived.  Oh, his room was
comfortable enough, the bed soft--not an inconsequential thing when
one's bones were as old as his--but the village was a mud hole of a
place and not where one wished to depart from the Earth to join one's
ancestors.

On the mainland across the stormy Formosa Strait from Taiwan, on the
coast just north of Quanzhou, Daru was peopled with many elderly
residents, some victims of the cursed dam, such as himself, some who
had actually lived and grown old here.  Save for a few younger souls,
fishermen mostly, it was a place of old men and women waiting to die.

Thinking about his forced relocation brought Zang to anger again, and
this time, the rage seemed to fill him with a hot glow, from his feet
to his face, staining red even his thoughts.  How dare they do such a
thing?  The foolish communists who saw everything in terms of their
immoral philosophy had ruined the country in but half a lifetime.  He
had hoped to live long enough to see the children of Mao plowed under,
but he was beginning to realize it was not to be.  And this angered him
even more.

He was old, old!  He had worked hard all his long life, and what was
his reward?  To be shunted to a half-wit grandson's home in a mud hole
village unfit for pigs?  It was not right.

Zang gripped the heavy cane tightly, and the veins in his hands stood
out to join the tendons and gnarled arthritic joints under paper-thin
and brown-spotted skin.  His rage enveloped him like a silkworm's
cocoon, warming his chilly flesh.  No, it was not right!

His sow of a granddaughter, only thirty-four and already so fat she
could hardly waddle, lumbered up the graveled path to stand in front of
him, her doughy hands on her massive hips, blocking the sun.  She said,
"Why are you out here again.  Grandfather Zang?  You will catch
pneumonia!  I would be happy if you did and died, but Ming-Yang would
be distressed, and I will not have it!

Get up and come inside, right now!"

The sow seemed fairly angry herself, which was unlike her.  Usually she
was merely torpid.  Dense as a post and twice as stupid, Zang
reflected, and the best his idiot grandson Ming could do for himself. A
shame.

"You are blocking the sun," Zang said.

"Stand aside."

"Are you grown deaf as well as stupid, you ancient fart-maker?  I said,
"Get up!"

" And with that, she reached out, as if to grab him and physically drag
him into the house.

This was a mistake.  With a speed and strength that surprised him, Zang
snapped the cane up and jabbed it into the sow's belly.

"Oof!"  she said, as she leaned forward, grabbing at her stomach.

Zang stood, pulled the cane back as if it were an axe, and delivered a
mighty blow to the side of her head.  The bone made a wet, but
satisfying crack!  and the sow went down in a heap.

Ha-ha!

Zang leaned over and smashed the cane into the sow's body with all the
strength he possessed.  Ah, this was good.  He hit her again.  Better.
And again.  Better still!

He was not the man he had been, but there were still a few moves left
in him, and the sense of rage he felt continued to burn as he beat
upon the prostrate and unresponsive sow. Block his sun, would she?  He
would show her!

He grew tired after a while, and decided to rest before resuming his
chore.  As he stood there contemplating the sow, he chanced to look up,
and thus saw his idiot grandson charging toward him, a three-lined
pitchfork in hand.

Amazing, since his grandson was the meekest of men, who would step
around a beetle to avoid crushing it, who let others prepare his chum
for him because he could not stand to hurt the bait fish, and who had
never in Zang's memory uttered even a harsh word in anger at another
human being.

"Old fool!  I will kill you!"  Ming-Yang screamed.

Old Zang smiled wolfishly.

"Yes?  Come and try, wiper of asses!"  He raised his cane to meet the
charge.

Zang was paying attention to how he planned to dance around the fork's
tines to strike Ming, but even so, with his heightened senses, he was
aware of his great-grandson Cheng, aged thirteen, rushing up behind his
father, a gleaming fish gaff lifted over his head.

Now, who was Cheng planning to skewer?

Well.  It did not matter, did it?  Zang would deal with him in due
course, just as he would deal with every other person in this mud hole
of a village.

He would kill them all.

Finally, a happy thought.  He laughed aloud.

 Thursday, June 2nd Quantico, Virginia

Alex Michaels pedaled his recumbent trike along the wide bike path
between Net Force HQ and the Chinese restaurant where he sometimes had
lunch, pumping hard.  The day was hot and muggy, despite a cloudy
overcast, and sweat had already drenched his T-shirt and spandex
shorts.  He shifted up another gear as he zipped past a trio of Marine
officers from the base, jogging along at a pretty good clip themselves.
Ordinarily, he enjoyed riding the trike, feeling the burn in his legs
and lungs, knowing he was working his muscles and cooking off that half
carton of Haagen-Dazs he'd eaten the night before.  Ordinarily, the
commander of Net Force enjoyed a lot of things, but like his feet
toe-clipped into the pedals, a lot of what he had been doing lately had
been no more than going through the motions.

Work was pretty good.  Aside from the ten thousand usual small fish Net
Force had to school and round up, there weren't any major problems in
the world of computer crime just at the moment.  Nothing like the mad
Russian who'd wanted to take over the planet, or the senator's aide who
wanted to buy up the world bit by bit, or even the dotty English lord
who'd wanted to bring back the glory days of the Empire.  Congress
hadn't cut him off at the knees lately, and his boss, the new FBI
director, was sometimes hardheaded, but basically not too bad, and she
mostly left him alone.

Work was fine.  It was his personal life that was an absolute wreck.

He guided the trike to the right, to make sure the two bicyclers coming
from the other direction side-by-side had plenty of room to get by. The
couple, an older man and woman, waved as he went by.  He gave them a
quick lift of his hand in return.

His ex-wife, Megan, had gotten engaged, and was petitioning the courts
in Idaho for sole custody of their daughter, Susie.  Her new love
wanted to adopt the girl.  Susie liked her mom's new friend, which was
more than Michaels could say.  That he had decked the man at a family
Christmas gathering had not helped the situation any--even though it
had felt pretty good at the time.

Michaels could fight it.  His lawyer said he had a pretty good chance
of winning in court, and Michaels's knee jerk reaction at first had
been to do just that, fight it until his last breath, if need be.  But
he loved his daughter, and' she was at a tender age, still years away
from being a teenager.  What would a nasty court battle do to her?  The
[ last thing he wanted to do was traumatize his only child."

Would it be better for her to have a mother and father even a
stepfather--there with her all the time?  Washington, D.C."  was a long
way from Boise, and Michaels didn't see his daughter as much as he
wished.  Had shuffling out to see him in the summers done some kind of
irreparable harm to Susie?  Would it make her life worse in the long
run?

The big banked curve on the bike trail was just ahead, and rather than
slow down, Michaels decided he was going to power his way through it.
He upshifted and pumped even harder.  But as he started into the curve,
he saw a group of walkers ahead, residents of a local nursing home.

They were spread almost all the way across the path.  He didn't have a
warning horn on the trike, and he had a sudden fear that if he yelled
for them to get out of the way, one of the old folks might well keel
over from a heart attack.

He stopped pedaling and squeezed the hand brakes  The heavy-duty disk
brakes on all three wheels squeaked from the sudden pressure, and there
came the smell of burning circuit boards as the trike slowed
dramatically.  On a two-wheeler, he'd probably be going sideways now,
but the trike just wobbled the rear end back and forth a little as it
came almost to a stop.

None of the geriatric crowd, most of whom looked to be in their
eighties, even noticed him until he crept around them at walking
speed.

That would have been all he needed, to plow into Grandma and Granddaddy
on his trike at full tilt.  One more brick on the load..

And, of course, there was the big problem in his life:

Toni.

She was still in England, practicing pentjak silat, the Indonesian
martial art in which she was an adept, studying with that Carl
somebody.  There hadn't been anything personal between Carl and Toni
when Michaels had left the U.K."  but--who knew about now?  It had been
more than a month.  A lot could happen in a month.

Toni Fiorella was smart, beautiful, and could kill you with her hands
if she felt so inclined.  She'd been his deputy commander until she'd
quit.  And she'd been his lover--until she'd found out about his
indiscretion with the blond MI-6 agent Angela Cooper.

Near indiscretion, Alex, his little voice said.  We didn't actually do
anything, remember?

Yeah, we did.  It never should have gotten to the point where I even
thought about it.

We were tired, half-drunk, and Cooper was working at it--the massage
and all-No excuse.

It was an argument he'd had with himself a thousand times in the last
six weeks.  With a thousand variations.  If only Toni hadn't gone under
the channel to France.  If only he hadn't agreed to a beer and fish and
chips with Angela.

If only he hadn't agreed to go to her place to let her massage his
back.  If, if, if.

It was all pointless speculation now.  And he couldn't lie to himself
about it, no matter how much he wished it.

He thought about bringing the trike back up to speed, but it suddenly
didn't seem worth the effort.  The Chinese place was not that far away.
It wasn't as if he was in any kind of hurry now, was it?  Or was
hungry.  Or gave a rat's ass about getting back to work on time.

Even the thought of getting a new project car hadn't given him any
great joy.  He'd done a Plymouth Prowler I and a Mazda MX-5, a Miata,
but the garage at his condo' sat empty now.  The Miata had been the car
in which he'd.

first kissed Toni.  He couldn't keep it after she'd quit on him and
stayed in England.

He blew out a sigh.

You sure are a sorry, self-pitying bastard, aren't you?

Snap out of it!  Suck it up!  Be a man!

"Fuck you," he told his inner voice.  But that part of him was right.
He wasn't a sensitive New Age kinda guy who got all weepy in sad
movies.  In his world, men took care of business and soldiered on. That
was the way his father had taught him, and that was how he'd lived his
life.  Wailing and wringing your hands was not what a man did.  You
screwed up, then you took the heat, and you got on with your life,
period, end of story.  What was that old saying: You can't do the time,
don't do the crime?  That was pretty much it.

In theory, anyway.

Thursday Sperryville, Virginia

"Ow," Jay Gridley said.  He slapped at his bare arm, and when he pulled
his hand away, there was a splotch of liquid red surrounding the
crushed body of a mosquito.

At least he thought it was a mosquito--it was hard to tell.

"Murderer," Soji said.  She smiled.

"Self-defense," he said.

"If I'd known I was gonna be attacked by all these itty-bitty vampires,
I'd have thought twice about going for a walk in the woods with you. Or
maybe brought a bunch of matches I could carve into wooden stakes. This
would be so much more pleasant in

VR."

"My father used to say that God made two mistakes," she said.

"Mosquitoes and politicians.  Of course, he was an alderman, so he
could say that.  But he was wrong-both mosquitoes and politicians have
their places."

Jay shook his head.

"Sounds like more Buddhistic smoke and mirrors to me.  You got to go
some to justify mosquitoes."

"Really?  Tell that to the bats who eat them."

"They could eat something else.  Plenty of bugs that don't bite people.
They could double up on gnats or something."

"Come on.  Jay.  If you take away everything that causes you
discomfort, there's no way to measure your pleasure."

They were on a narrow dirt trail that wound through a section of mostly
hardwood forest.  There was enough shade so the day's heat didn't lay
too heavy a hand on them, and the air was rich in oxygen, the smells of
warm summer vegetation, and decades of damp humus.  The backpack was a
lot heavier than anything Jay was used' to carrying, but since Soji's
was every bit as heavy, he could hardly complain.  He had the tent, but
she had the cooking gear.

He shook his head.  He couldn't successfully argue philosophy or
religion with Sojan Rinpoche.  She could talk circles around him.
Though only in her twenties, she was much more educated in such things
than he was.  They had met after the on-line injury he'd got stalking
the creator of a quantum computer that had caused Net Force all kinds
of problems.  Since they had come together initially in VR--virtual
reality--via the internet, they had been in persona, and hers had been
that of an aged Tibetan monk.

She was a lot better looking as a young woman than.  she had been as an
old man.  And she had been instrumental in helping him recover from a
brain injury that theoretically wasn't even possible.

"See, that's the problem with you.  Jay.  You spend too much time
on-line.  You need to get out more."

"I could put mosquitoes in a scenario if I wanted."

"You could.  But have you ever?"

"Well, no."

"And without experiencing real bugs sucking your Mood and going splat
when you slap them, you wouldn't be able' to do it accurately.  And
even then, it would only be an imitation, and not the real thing."

"But isn't this all just an illusion?"  He waved one hand to encompass
the wooded hillside.

"Wrong religion, white boy.  Try the Hindus or the existentialists.

Buddhists aren't into denying reality.  We like to get down and roll
around in it."

"What about that old man persona of yours on the net?"

"A tool, that's all.  Got me past a lot of preconceptions, and made my
patients relax.  Besides, an illusion is by definition not real, so
altering it one way or the other doesn't make it any more or less real,
now does it?"

He chuckled.  Boy, he liked being with her.

"So how much farther is it to this secret place of yours?"

"Not far.  Couple more miles."

He gave out a theatrical groan.

"You didn't tell me I was going to have to hike halfway around the
planet (Carrying a house on my back.  This better be worth the
(walk."

"Oh, it will be.  Guaranteed satisfaction or your money back."

Well, that sounded promising.  He slapped at another mosquito, and was
inclined to agree with Soji's father on at least one point, despite
what she'd said.

 Quantico, Virginia

When John Howard walked into the range, he heard, "Tens-hull General in
the house!  Morning, Brigadier."

Howard fought the grin, but lost.  Amid the familiar tang of burned
gunpowder.  Sergeant Julio Fernandez stood at ramrod attention, a
perfect salute in place.  Any crisper and he would have crinkled.

"No such thing as a brigadier anymore, you know that."

"It has a nice ring, sir[" "At ease, Lieutenant."  Howard said.  He
returned the salute.

"Not funny, John."

"Hey, I can do it, you know.  Me being a general now instead of a
colonel.  What do you think.  Gunny?"

Behind Julio, the grinned.

"Oh, yes, sir, I believe Sergeant Fernandez is excellent officer
material, sir.  Never has earned his money."

"I get promoted, first thing I'll do is fire your sorry ass," Fernandez
said.

"You'll be out whitewashing rocks on the parade ground eighteen hours a
day."

Gunny laughed.

"Long arms or sidearms today, sir?"

Howard said, "I believe the sergeant needs a lesson in how to shoot his
pistol."

Gunny nodded and set two plastic boxes of ammo on the counter.  The
blue box contained .357 cartridges, the orange box 9mm.  Howard grabbed
the blue box, Fernandez the orange.

"Lanes eight and nine," the range master said.

Howard put his earplugs in as he headed for the entrance to the
gallery, Fernandez hurrying to beat him to the door so he could hold it
open.

"Let me.  General.  I wouldn't want you complaining you hurt your hand
or anything after I shoot the pants off of you.  I never got to beat a
general before."

"And not likely you'll start today.  Sergeant."

In their respective lanes, the two Net Force military men set their
ammo down and started up the holoprojectors.

They used identical scenarios when they went for scores against each
other, so there would be no doubt who had out shot whom.

Howard slipped the Fist paddle holster with his Smith & Wesson .357
Model 66 revolver nestled in it into his waistband and adjusted things.
The S&W was an antique, stainless steel and not nearly as efficient as
the polymer tactical pistols Net Force issued.  The H&Ks and the
Walthers carried almost three times as much ammo, and had all kinds of
bells and whistles--lasers, suppressors, flashlights, all very modular.
Until recently, the Smith had been pretty much stock, unmodified.
Howard had allowed Gunny to talk him into trying a red dot scope, a
tiny one that mounted where the iron sights were, which had improved
his shooting immediately.  Even so, it felt like sacrilege--the old
wheel gun was as much talisman as anything, his good luck piece, and in
the same category as the tommy gun he had gotten from his grandfather.
It worked, but it couldn't really run with the newer hardware out
there, even with the Tasco scope.

Julio was still smiling every time he saw the scope, too.

"You ready, John?"

-"Crank it up."

Fernandez was using his blued Beretta Model 92, not as ancient as the
Smith, but certainly not in the same class as the tactical pistols,
either.  Two old and grizzled types they were, set in their ways.  If
they weren't careful, the future was going to blow right past them.

The mugger, armed with a crowbar, materialized thirty feet away and ran
toward Howard.  He snatched his piece out of the holster, brought it
up, and did a fast double tap, aiming at the chest.  The mugger stopped
and fell down.

The holographies on the range were pretty good, and the computer
registered the hits and kept track of everything.

"Got me by a quarter second," Fernandez said from the other side of the
bullet-resistant barrier.

"General's luck."

"Right," Howard said.

"Rack 'em up and I'll show you how lucky I really am."

The second mugger had a long knife, and Howard's first round caught him
a hair high, just at the base of the throat.  Good enough, since the
second round didn't go off.  Instead, there was a metallic pop!  and
the cylinder jammed.

"Got a mechanical malfunction here!"  Howard yelled.

He kept the weapon pointed downrange, waiting.

Julio came around the barrier, an eyebrow raised in question.

"Something broke.  Cylinder won't turn."

"I'll get Gunny out here to take a look.  So much for your six-for-sure
theory."

The range master said, "Sorry, sir, but sooner or later, everything
wears out.  You probably put thirty or forty thousand rounds through
this thing over the years, you got to expect it to metal fatigue and
start nickel-and-diming you to death.  I can fix it, but it's gonna
take a few days to get the parts and get 'em installed."

"General will need a leaner," Julio said.

"Can't have him walking around naked.  Why don't you show him the
Medusa?"

Gunny smiled and went to the gun safe.  He came back with a Styrofoam
box.  On top of it was a little pamphlet.

It said "Phillips & Rodgers, Inc.," over a little logo with a reversed
"P" and an "R" separated by a big "I."  The words "Owners Manual" were
under that.  Gunny handed Howard the pamphlet.  Howard flipped it open
to the first page and saw "Firearms Are Dangerous Weapons" in bold
print at the top of the page.

He shook his head.  That's what came of too many lawyers without enough
to do.  A maker had to warn you that a gun was dangerous.  What was the
duh-factor there?

Gunny opened the box.  Inside was a flat-black revolver with what
looked like ivory grips.  It had an un fluted cylinder, and seemed like
a K-frame S&W with a funny-looking squared-off and grooved barrel.

Fernandez took the revolver from the range master

"General, this here is a PR Model 47, aka Medusa.

Three-inch, match-grade, one-in-nine twist barrel, 8620

steel, heat-treated to 28 Rockwell, with a vanadium cylinder at 36
Rockwell.  Got a neat little red fiber-optic front sight, and fully
adjustable rear sight.  Coated with black Teflon, so it won't rust."

He handed the piece to Howard.  It felt good, familiar, if it looked a
little squarish for his tastes.

"You getting a commission from these people, Julio?  And why would I
like this more than my Smith?"

Fernandez grinned widely.

"Well, sir, if we can't get you to use a semiauto, at least we can get
you closer to the current century.  These first came out in 1996, I
believe, and they have a big advantage over your antique Smith.  They
will chamber and fire everything from an anemic .380 ACP to the hottest
.357 Magnum rounds, and a whole bunch of stuff in between.  You can
load it up with any variation of 9mm you can think of--Kurz, Largo,
Long, Luger, Mauser, Parabellum, Steyr, whatever, as well as .38 ACP,
.38 auto, .38 Super, or .38 Special.

Bunch of other calibers will work, too, but the manufacturer doesn't
recommend 'em."

"And how many cylinder changes do I have to carry to accomplish this
miracle?  Three?  Five?"

"No, sir, not a one.  Pop the cylinder and push back on the extractor
rod."

Howard did so.  The extractor looked very odd.

"Those are springs, those little things in the chambers.

Anything that'll fit, they'll hold in place, and it'll cook 'em off
just fine."

"Really?"

"Yes, sir.  You happen to find yourself on a battlefield somewhere and
you run out of .357, you can always find 9mm somewhere, it still being
the most popular military caliber worldwide.  It'll shoot the stuff we
use in our subguns."

Howard looked at the gun.

"What's the catch?"

"Well, sir, there are three.  It doesn't much like speed-loaders,
because of the springs.  You can make them work, but there's a little
trick to it.  Speed strips would be better, and they are easier to
carry anyhow.  Second, if you are going to mix calibers, you should
shoot the longer stuff first, so as not to gunk up the chambers.  And
third, if you are mixing calibers, the sights won't be dead-on for the
different ones, so you have to adjust the rear sights.  But that's the
same with mixing bullet weights, and most of the time, you'll be
shooting the same ammo.  Still, you can put a different caliber in
every chamber and fire them off just fine.  At close range, you don't
need to worry about the sights, anyhow."

Howard hefted the revolver.

"Interesting."

Gunny said, "Only thing I got in .357, General.  I have a snubnose
Smith M60 in .38 Special if you want to try that, but even with plus-P,
it ain't much gun, and it only holds five."

Julio nodded at the Medusa.

"Why don't you put a few through it, long as we are here?  Unless you
want to, uh, forfeit the match?"

"You wish."

Gunny said, "Lemme see your ring, sir."

Howard nodded and slipped the Net Force signet ring from his right
third finger.  It looked ordinary enough, but inside the mounting was a
tiny computer chip powered by a capacitor whose stored electricity came
from a small kinetic generator, basically a little weight that shifted
back and forth.  As of a month ago, all Net Force who carry and
field-issue sidearms, subguns, and rifles were equipped with smart
technology.  The guns had an internal chip that kept the actions from
operating unless they received a coded signal.  The rings sent the
signal, and had a range of a few centimeters, no more.  The Net Force
guns were all tuned to the same signal, so if needed, they could shoot
each other's weapons, but if anybody not wearing the transmitting
signet ring tried to fire a Net Force small arm, it would simply refuse
to go off.

Howard was not happy with the things, but he had been made to
understand that there was no choice in accepting them.  All federal
agencies would eventually be using smart guns, and the FBI was taking
the lead.

So far, the new guns had operated at 100 percent, no failures.  So
far.

Gunny put the ring into a slot on the coder and checked the program,
then did the same for the new gun.

"All set, sir."  He passed the ring and revolver back to Howard.

Howard looked at the gun as he slipped the ring back on.  The theory
was fine.  If your kid found your weapon and hadn't been taught
properly, at least he wouldn't shoot himself or one of the neighbors.
It wasn't foolproof--somebody could snatch one of the rings and use
it--but it was supposed to keep Net Force people from being shot if
they lost a gun in the heat of battle.  And once a month, you were to
run your ring through a coder that reset the command signal, so any
lost rings would no longer work after thirty days.  He didn't like it,
but that was how it was going to be.  End of story.

Back at the lane, Howard loaded the revolver using his357 ammo.  The
shells were a little harder to put into the chambers than they were in
the Smith, but not that much harder.

He set a stationary bull's-eye at fifteen meters, lined the sights up.
The front sight had a red dot on it, easy to see under the overhead
lane lights.  He squeezed off a round.

He was surprised.  Even though it fired the same cartridge, the recoil
seemed considerably less than the Smith.  Probably because it was a
heavier piece, plus the barrel was a half-inch longer.  He looked at
the counter.  A centimeter below dead center.  Probably zeroed at
twenty-five meters.

He cooked off the rest of the cylinder, and managed a grouping that
went maybe four or five centimeters, all in the X ring.  Damn.  This
was great for a gun he'd never fired before.  Hell, it was great for a
gun he'd been shooting for years.  Pointed fine, too; it felt very
ergonomic in his grip.

"Not bad for an old guy," Julio said.

"Want to get back to it?"  He waved at the target.

"You and the Beretta you sleep with against a gun I've just picked up?
Right."

"Tell you what, to make it fair, I'll go and borrow that snub .38
Special Gunny has.  Ten bucks says I can beat you with that."

"If you are determined to give up your money.  Sergeant, I will take
it."

Fernandez grinned.

"Be right back."

London, England

Tom Fiorella deflected Carl Stewart's right punch to her throat with
her own strike at his face-Because he had his punch backed up with his
left hand, the wipe was there, and he took it, and fired a backup elbow
at her temple Because her strike was also covered with her off hand,
she had the parry for his elbow and she rolled it aside-Carl switched
tactics, twisted, went with her move, looped his parried hand across
her chest and stepped in for a throw behind her leg, the kenjit-Toni
dropped her weight, knees bent deeply, leaned forward, and reversed the
move, snapped her own foot back, caught his leg for a beset
takedown-Carl leaned in, put his head on her shoulder, stole her base,
and switched feet--fast!--and did the inside sweep, sapu dalqm-She
wasn't quick enough with the counter, and she went down, dived and
tried to make it into a roll, but he was there, tapping her on the
floating ribs with the heel of his wrestling shoe, just hard enough to
let her know he had the shot.

Toni grinned, took his offered hand, and got back to her feet.

The entire sequence had taken maybe three seconds.

"Good series," he said.

"Yes."

They were alone in the school where he taught his classes, a version of
the Indonesian martial art of pentjak silat that was similar to her own
system.  Toni had been training since the age of thirteen; she knew the
eight djurus of the entry-level style called Bukti Negara, plus the
eighteen djurus of the more complex parent art, Serak, and until she
had met Carl Stewart, had never sparred with anybody who could beat
her.  Well, except for her teacher, Guru De Beers  Guru was in her
eighties now, still shaped like a brick and dangerous to anybody who
might be stupid enough to think she was a helpless old lady, but if
push came to shove, Toni knew she could best her teacher in a fight.
Barely.

That was the thing about silat; it didn't depend on strength or speed,
but more on principles.  In theory, a player always expected to go up
against bigger, stronger, and multiple opponents, who were probably
armed, and at least as well trained.  Being able to survive and even
prevail under such circumstances meant your technique had to be very
good, and your system absolutely scientific.

There were no perfect arts that would handle every possible
attack--when Toni talked to martial artists who claimed their ancient
systems were complete, she'd always ask them which form taught them how
to defend against a twelve-gauge shotgun at thirty feet--but some arts
were more effective than others.  In her opinion, silat was better than
most.  Of course, she would think that, given her years of training in
it.

Carl glanced at the wall clock.

"Got an hour before the beginning class gets here.  You want to get a
cup of tea?

Or coffee?"

Toni hesitated a second, then said, "Sure."

There was no reason not to.  Alex was back in Washington, and she was
still not happy with him.  She had programmed her com to bounce his
calls, though he still tried to get through at least once every day.
They were officially broken up, and she didn't work for Net Force
anymore.  She had enough money to stay in London through the summer, if
she felt like it, then she was going to have to find a job, and that
would have to be back in the U.S. Meanwhile, she was learning a lot
from Carl, who was easily the best silat player she had ever seen in
person.  He was a good twenty years older than she was,

but there was an attraction that went beyond martial arts.

He was in good shape, good-looking, and, she had found out by accident,
rich.  He hadn't pushed it, but Carl knew she and Alex had split, and
he was interested in her as a woman.

So far, she hadn't pursued a relationship beyond exchanging ways to
beat attackers to various kinds of pulp.

So far.  It was tempting--Alex had done so with Angela Cooper, the MI-6
operative they had worked with on the Goswell operation, and Toni was
still very much pissed off at him for that.  Yeah, sure, she had
stumbled with Rusty that one time, but that was before she and Alex had
become lovers.  That didn't really count.

The thing was, as angry as she was at Alex, as much as she wanted to
break things and yell herself hoarse at him, she still loved him.

It was kind of hard to get around that, loving him.

Still, Carl was here, he wanted to get to know her better, and there
were no strings on her.  She had an idea that Carl would probably be a
caring and considerate lover, and she and Alex hadn't spent much time
making love the last few weeks they had been together, and that had
been more than a month ago.  It was a thought.

Carl was halfway to the door before Toni realized she was lost in her
thoughts.

She hurried to catch up with him.

"I've been thinking, there's a place you might like to see," he said.

"You busy Saturday morning?"

"Not at all," she said.

"Fine.  I'll pick you up at your flat.  Around eight a.m.?"

"Great."

Quantico, Virginia

Howard had to admit that the PR had some advantages over the Smith. He
recovered the sight picture for his second shot quicker, and the
slightly longer sight radius made him more accurate.  He was doing
better than he usually did with the Smith, and for a new gun, that was
fairly amazing.  The trigger was crisp, maybe four pounds
single-action, ten or so double-action.  These people did good work on
their hardware.  Made in Piano, Texas, according to the information
stamped into the black steel.

Who would have guessed that?  Texas.

Even so, Julio was beating him, just barely.  And using a snub-nose
Chief's Special he had never shot before, that ought to be
impossible.

After the last go-round, Howard put the Medusa down.

He liked it.  He could use it for a few days until the Smith was
repaired.

"Sergeant Fernandez, bring that little revolver here, I want to take a
look at it."

"God hates a sore loser, John."

"Let me see it."

Feroandez came around the barrier, holding the .38 Special snubbie on
his palm, cylinder latch up.

Howard looked at the weapon.  Stainless steel, two-inch barrel, plain
ramp-and-notch sight, nonadjustable.  The grips were black plastic,
boot-style, cut small so as not to reveal a concealed weapon under a
thin jacket.  The Chief was basically a smaller version of his
revolver, a J-frame to his K-frame, a five-shooter instead of a
six-honker.  In the hands of an expert, this gun could certainly put
the bullets on target, but the short barrel and minimal sights made
such a thing difficult on a good day without a lot of practice.  Julio
shouldn't be able to do it right out of the box.

"Satisfied?"  He started to pull his hand away.

Howard grabbed the revolver and turned it over.  When he did, he
noticed the little bulge at the top of the other grip panel.  At the
same time, he felt the small button on the inside of the grip, under
his middle finger.

"And just what is this?"  He pointed the gun downrange and squeezed the
grips.

A hundred meters away, a bright red spot appeared all the way out on
the back wall.

There' was a laser built into the grips.

"You cheating bastard.  You set me up."

Julio laughed.

"Gunny showed it to me before you got here.  It's from somebody called
Crimson Trace--cool, ain't it?  You adjust it with a tiny little Alien
wrench, right there, and up there, and it fits inside a regular
holster.

Doesn't add any appreciable mass or weight, and unlike a dot scope, you
don't even have to bring the weapon up to eye level, you can hip-shoot.
Gets a couple thousand rounds per set of batteries, and you can carry a
spare set in the other grip panel.  They make 'em for K-frames, too, so
you could get them for the Medusa or the Smith."

"You work for these people, too, Julio?"

Julio laughed again and pointed at the dancing dot.

"Old guys like us, we need some advantages.  You can see that sucker a
couple hundred meters away in the dark and, according to Gunny, it
shows up okay at handgun combat range even in daylight.  Wherever the
red spot is, that's where the bullet hits.  If it's foggy or you're
worried about giving away your position, you can use the regular
sights, 'cause the laser don't get in the way.  Gunny says they make
these for a whole bunch of guns, including my

Beretta.  I'm gonna get one before Joanna has our kid and we have to
start putting away every penny for his college education."

"God hates a cheater more than he does a sore loser."

"No second-place winner in a gunfight, John.  You know that.  What do
you think about the Medusa?"

It wouldn't do to admit to Julio how much he liked it, so he said, "I
can force myself to use it until Gunny gets the Smith back online."

Julio gave him a knowing grin.

"Ah.  I see."

They'd been serving together too long for Howard to get much past his
old friend.  He grinned.

"Okay, so it's a great piece, you happy?"

"You working for these people, John?  Getting a commission on sales?"

It was Howard's turn to laugh, and he did.

 Seattle, Washington

Sitting in his Dodge Caravan, Patrick Morrison rode the ferry from
Seattle toward Bainbridge Island.  This was the first leg of a journey
that would involve driving north after the boat ride, another ferry,
then another short stint in the car, to finally arrive back at Port
Townsend.  The picturesque little town on the little peninsula where
the Straits of Juan de Fuca turned south into Puget Sound was only
about forty miles away from downtown Seattle as the crow flew, but a
two-hour trip by car and boat, if you were lucky enough to make the
ferry connections just right.

Morrison owned a house on the hill in Port Townsend, where Shannon, his
bride of four months, was doubtless still in bed asleep at this hour.
She was twenty-five, gorgeous, a trophy wife half his age.  Shannon was
his second marriage, the first one having gone bad after almost twenty
years.  Marian had also been beautiful when he'd met her, and
brilliant, which he'd always thought was the bigger attraction.  But
she'd let herself go, had gotten fat and lazy, and, it turned out, had
been too smart--especially with her mouth.  He liked intelligent women,
but he found that he liked them at a distance.  Too close, and they
were like fire, you got burned by their brilliance.

Marian had turned that heat onto him too many times, and she knew all
the spots where it would hurt him the most.

Shannon, on the other hand, was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
She wasn't really stupid, probably about average intelligence; she
thought he was a genius, being a scientist and all.  Actually, he just
missed the cut for genius by an IQ point or two, but he was pretty sure
she would never throw that in his face.  Nor would she stab him with
the pointed question that, if he was so smart, why hadn't he won a
Nobel?

Besides, Shannon knew tricks with her hands and her body that Morrison
had never dreamed of doing in nineteen years of marriage to Marian. Her
mouth was smart-but in an entirely different way ... He shifted a bit,
suddenly excited by the idea of being home and in bed with Shannon. 
Easy, big fella, he told himself.  It's a ways yet.

The big ferry blasted its warning horn at a sailboat that ventured too
near.  Sail craft generally had the right of way over powerboats, all
things being equal, but a ferry hauling scores of cars and hundreds of
passengers was more equal than a thirty-foot sailboat foolish enough to
tack in front of it.  A sailor and a retired airline pilot that
Morrison knew liked to say, "If you fly your plane into a mountain, you
don't get to blame the mountain."  Nobody had any sympathy for a day
sailor who cut in front of a ferry--or plowed into one, which also
happened from time to time.

Morrison opened the Dodge's door and stepped out.

The van was six years old, but a Dodge, so it was good for years if he
took care of it.  Not that he intended to keep it that long.  Pretty
soon, he'd be able to buy a new car.  A fleet of new cars, if he
wanted, with a ship upon which to transport the fleet, and a navy to
escort it, if he so wished.

He smiled at the thought.  The air had that salty, seaweed tang to it,
and even though it was early and there was the passage wind blowing,
the day was already warm, and promised to be hot before it was done.

He worked his way across the hard rubber gratings toward the
railing--he was parked forward and on the deck under the sky, outside
of the superstructure enclosure where all the foot passengers rode.

Gulls flew past.  It was a great morning.

Of course it was a great morning.  The test had gone so well he
couldn't believe it.  The Chinese had clamped down on it fast,
squelching the incident into official silence deeper than that in a
tomb, so there hadn't been any reports in the media, even in China.
Maybe especially in China.

Morrison had his sources, though, and he found out quickly enough.  The
test had replicated the experiments with animals even better than
anticipated.  Well within the cutoff that separated "chronic" from
"acute."  It might not work on a battlefield with shifting troops, but
the device would definitely work on a permanent settlement.

He'd known that it would.  Well, to be absolutely honest, he had been
almost certain.  There was always the worry about field testing versus
the lab.  One never got over that.  It took only a few failures to keep
that anxiety alive forever, rather like Frankenstein's monster,
shambling around in the dark looking for a friend.

Failure, unfortunately, had no friends.  Which was how Dr.  Patrick
Reilly Morrison, with his Ph.D. in physics from MIT, had come to be
involved with the project in the first place.  He'd had a spectacular
failure in his extremely low frequency experiments involving
chimpanzees, and he'd lost his grant and funding big-time and damned
fast.  It was as if he had developed a sudden case of pneumonic
plague--the first sneeze, and every professional contact he knew
scattered as if they were parts of a bomb--ka-blamm!--leaving him
stinking of smoke and failure and very much alone.  No rat leaving a
sinking ship had ever moved as fast as his grad students and research
assistants had bailed on him, bastards and bitches, each and every one
of them ... He smiled at his own bitterness.  Well, it really was an
ill wind that blew no good, wasn't it?  If the ELF simian protocols
hadn't gone south on him, he'd never have gotten the job in Alaska,
would he?  And look where that had taken him.  He could hardly be
positioned better, could he?

Well, yes, he supposed, academically he could be.  And certainly in
pure scientific circles, with major universities begging him to come
and present papers?  Well, he was not at the top of that list.  Ah, but
if somebody just up and gave you five or six hundred million dollars,
maybe more, to fund whatever research your heart desired, no strings,
no oversight?  Well, that would go a long, long way to assuage one's
wounded ego, wouldn't it?  People would kill for that kind of funding,
and rightly so.

Money would get you through times of no Nobel better than a Nobel would
get you through times of no money, that was the cold truth.

With half a billion in his pocket, he could thumb his nose at the
journals, take his time to do whatever he damned well pleased, and when
he was ready, then they'd come begging, by God!  Because his theories
did work after all, didn't they?

True, he didn't want to take the credit for it just now, given the mode
and manner in which he had finally proved himself correct, but someday
it would be his to claim.  Perhaps he would hire the Goodyear blimp and
have it fly back and forth across the country with lights flashing and
blazing it out for all to see:

"I told you so!"

He looked at his watch.  He would go home, spend the day with Shannon,
then catch a plane back to SeaT ac for the flight to Washington, D.C.
After the second and third tests, the events would surely be public,
and it was of primary importance that he be prepared for that.  He was
one of the sharper knives in the drawer, and he knew that it was not
enough to be smart, you had to be clever as well.

Smart, clever, a beautiful young wife who thought the sun rose and set
in his shadow, and rich--he had it all but the last, and that was
coming, a mere matter of a few weeks or months.  When you got right
down to it, how important was academic recognition compared to those?

He could fund research if he wanted!  Be a foundation unto himself!

Hah!

Life was good--and it was about to get better.

Washington, D.C.

"We're going to Oregon," Tyrone Howard said.  He grinned.

Nadine Harris, who at thirteen was the same age as Tyrone, returned his
smile in a larger, white-against-chocolate version.

"Exemplary, Tyrone.  Congratulations!"

They were at the soccer field at their school, where they had gone to
practice throwing boomerangs.

"No," he said, "we are going to Oregon.  My dad, my mom, me, and
you."

She blinked at him.

"What?"

"I asked if you could go.  My parents said it was okay.

We can both enter the tourney.  I might even let you win."

She laughed.

"Let me win?  In your dreams, funny boy.

Last I looked, my best hang time was seventeen seconds better than your
best.  Your 'rang comes down, you're packed up and halfway home before
mine even apexes."

"That was then, honey chile, this is now."  He waved his backpack.

"It came?"  She knew right away what he was talking about.  That was
one of the things he liked about her.  She wasn't the most beautiful
girl in the world, but she was athletic, and she was very quick.

He nodded.

"Yep.  In this morning's mail."

"Lemme see, lemme see!"  She reached for his backpack, and he quickly
jerked it back.

"Hey, easy!  I don't want you to damage it."

"I'll damage your head if you don't give it up right now!"

He laughed.  From inside the backpack, he produced the object in
question--a new boomerang.

And not just any boomerang, but a Larry Takahashi

KinuHa--& Silk Leaf--a paxolin MTA L-Hook identical to the one that
Jerry Prince had used to win maximum time aloft at the Internationals
last year.  It had cost him sixty-five dollars, plus insured shipping,
and it came pre tuned and ready to throw.  Prince had spiraled his up
at the Internationals in Sydney last summer and hung it for five
minutes and sixteen seconds--with a thirty-klick-per-hour wind blowing.
On a calm day, word was he could keep it in the air a whole lot
longer, in practice anyway.

The boomerang was lightweight, thin, and flexible, made from layers of
linen and glue, and colored a psychedelic electric blue with a black
leaf stenciled on the long arm.  The blue made it easier to spot if you
missed a catch and it augered into the grass.

"Wow," Nadine said.

"So, are you going to come with us?"

She looked up from the 'rang.

"I dunno.  My mom planned to have me doing yard work this summer.
Mowing the lawn, helping the old lady across the street with her
garden, like that."

"It's not the whole summer, it's only three weeks.  My mom said she'd
talk to yours.  C'mon, Nadine, how often are you going to get a chance
to enter the Junior Nationals, if they aren't here in town?"

"Oh, I'll ask, 'cause I'd love to go.  Oregon."  She pronounced it
"Ory-gone."

"My dad is borrowing an RV from somebody he knows," he said.

"It'll be cheaper than staying in motels and eating out.  It'll sleep
like eight, and there's only four of us.  Dad says we'll take five or
six days to drive out, spend a week there, then a leisurely drive home.
We'll get there like two days before the JN, have time to practice."

"It sounds great.  Doesn't it rain all the time out there, though?"

"Nope.  My dad goes out there in the winter sometimes for survival
training.  It's desert and snow and all on the eastern side of the
state in the winter, but pretty green and sunny in Portland in the
summer."

"They still have Indians out there, don't they?"

"Yeah, they own casinos.  And the cowboys herd cattle in helicopters or
riding on ATVs.  It's the northwest, dummy, not Bali."

"You talk too much.  Show me what you got."  She waved at the new
'rang.

"No, you get to throw it first," he said.

"Really?  No, I couldn't."

"Yeah, you can.  Then I can beat you and make you feel bad."

"Hah.  Gimme it."

He smiled as she took the new boomerang and headed out to where they
had chalked a throwing circle.  He sure did like her.  She wasn't
gorgeous like Belladonna Wright, and Nadine didn't make his heart race
as Bella had done with a touch or a look, but he enjoyed being around
her.

She was somebody he could hang with, not exactly like a sister, but not
somebody who stirred up his hormones too much, either.  Outside of his
pal Jimmy-Joe Hatfield, he didn't have any other close friends.  And
boy, she could throw.

He watched her limber up her arm and shoulder, drop some pixie dust to
check the wind direction, then set herself for the throw.

The new boomerang whirled from her hand and soared, climbed steeply,
twirling into the morning sunshine.  Man.

Look at it go.

 Friday, June 3rd Quantico, Virginia

As he usually did when things got dicey in his personal life, Alex
Michaels buried himself in work.  Which was why he was at the office at
nine p.m. on a Friday night, keeping busy.  He scanned computer files,
logged into reports annotated by his staff, and tried not to think
about anything else.

Somebody was scamming old people by selling phantom retirement property
from a website that appeared to be located in some kind of moving
vehicle in south Florida.

Another third world country had joined the net, peddling drugs you
couldn't buy without a prescription in the U.S."  and for a third the
cost.

Some hacker had broken into the Sears mainframe and was threatening to
wipe all the memory clean if they didn't pay him half a million
dollars.

It was the usual kind of thing that Net Force handled, and there seemed
to be more and more of it coming their way every day.

It had been a long day.  He noticed he was getting very stiff in his
chair, hunched over the keyboard.  He could operate his computer with
his voice, of course, and voxax was as fast as he could do it
manually--faster, even--but he'd never quite gotten used to dictating
reports.  He'd speak, the words would appear on the screen, and he
could do it leaning back and comfortable, but it somehow didn't feel
the same.  Maybe they used different parts of the brain, keyboarding
and speaking.

Or maybe he was just getting old and the future was passing him by ...
He thought about going down the hall to the gym and doing his djurus.
Toni had been teaching him pentjak silat for six months, since after
he'd almost been assassinated, and he officially knew four of the short
forms.  She'd started him with the simple ones from Bukti, but after
he'd gotten two of those, she decided to skip over the rest and go
right into the more complex Serak system.  Bukti was pretty much a
filter, she'd said, a perfectly good system of self-defense, but used
to strain out casual students from the really serious ones.  After you
learned the eight Bukti Negara forms, then you were allowed to
proceed--if you were lucky--into the parent art, Serak.  Toni had
decided he was serious enough, apparently.  So he had already learned
the first two from the mother art and had bagged practicing the others.
This was pretty quick, she'd told him.  Some teachers only showed
students two or three djurus a year, and he had twice that in six
months.

And Michaels already knew the third one, pretty much.

He'd watched Toni enough to pick up the moves, though he didn't tell
her that.  So he was way ahead of the learning curve here.

Probably helped if you were working out every day.

Not to mention sleeping with the teacher, Michaels thought.

Though that wasn't happening anymore.

Shit.  Let's not even go down this road again, okay?

Either work out or get back to the computer, but don't sit here
whining!

Yeah.  I hear that.

The computer.  He could practice his silat later.

He looked around.  Most of his regular crew was gone, only the night
shift was on.  Gridley and Howard were on vacation, and Toni was in
England.

Very quiet around here.

Saturday, June 4th London

"Why all the secrecy?"  Toni asked.

Carl smiled.

"Come on, everybody likes pleasant surprises, don't they?"

"Well, not really.  I know some people who wouldn't answer the door if
somebody showed up on their porch with a check for a million
dollars--not unless they had called first."

They were in a section of London that Toni didn't recognize, a fairly
well-to-do neighborhood.  They had passed Elephant's Castle, and she
thought they were heading north and west, but she had gotten turned
around during Carl's tour of interesting places.

He laughed as he downshifted the Morgan's manual transmission.  He'd
told her that the car, a classic from the fifties, spent most of its
time in the shop, but that when it was running properly, he much
enjoyed driving it.  The problem with old British cars was that they
only worked if they liked you.  If you accidentally insulted one, it
would pout, he said, and simply refuse to go until you had suffered
enough.

They passed a big building off to the left.

"Imperial War Museum," Carl said.

"We're not far now."

She had to admit, she had been enjoying her time with the silat
instructor.  Enough so that she considered getting to know him better
than just as a teacher and friend.  But despite having quit her job,
and the breakup with Alex, she wasn't ready to get into another
relationship just yet.

The wounds were still too raw.

"Here we go, then."

He pulled the two-seater to the curb.

"This is a no-parking zone," she said.

"Right.  And the meter maid who usually works this stretch is one of my
students.  Orinda?  Short, built like a fireplug?  Be hell to pay in
class if she had my motorcar towed."  He smiled.

The building they parked in front of was another of those sixteenth-or
seventeenth-century things with columns and dormered windows and all,
not particularly large or imposing, but stately enough.

They walked up to the front.  A uniformed, but unarmed, guard saw them,
tipped his hat, and said, "Morning, Mr.  Stewart."

"Hello, Bryce.  Lovely day."

Toni looked at him.

"Come here a lot, do you?"

"Now and then."

There was a brass plate on the wall next to a pair of tall wooden
doors, and Toni saw that they were about to enter the London Museum of
Indonesian Art.

Ah.

She happened to notice a list of the board of directors for the museum
posted just inside the door, and prominent on the list was the name
"Carl Stewart."

She looked at her companion.

"You're on the board of directors here?"

He shrugged.

"My family contributes to various foundations and such.  Give enough
money, they put your name up somewhere.  It's nothing, really."

"Place seems to be empty except for us," she said.

"Well, that is one of the perks of having your name on the wall.
They'll open a bit early for you."

When she'd first met Stewart, just after going to his silat school in a
bad section of town, she'd used her access to the local computer nets
to check him out.  His family was more than well-off, a thing he had
not mentioned.

The rich were different, and not just because they had more money.

"This way."

She followed him down a corridor with shadow puppets mounted on the
walls, and into a room at the end.

"Wow," she said.

All around here, in freestanding glass cases, or in clear-fronted
cabinets against the walls, were scores--hundreds--of krises.  Some
were in wooden sheathes, some out, revealing a multitude of shapes and
patterns of whorled steel in the blades.

"Wow," she said again.

"Impressive, isn't it?  The largest collection of such daggers outside
of Indonesia."

Toni nodded absently, looking at a seven-waved black steel blade with
inlaid lines of gold outlining the body of a dragon whose tail
undulated all the way up to the weapon's point.  The dragon's head was
at the base of the blade, opposite the longer side of the asymmetrical
hilt.

"Raja naga," Carl said.

"Royal dragon.  It was made for a Javanese sultan around 1700.  Both of
those sheathes there belong to it--that one is the formal lad rang the
one shaped like a ship, the other one, with the rounded ends, that's
the gay aman for informal wear."

The sheathes were made of carved wood, with embossed metal sleeves over
the long shaft in which the dagger rode.

"What's the pa morT Toni asked.

He looked away from the exquisite blade to her.

"You know about these things?"

"Not really," she said.

"My guru presented me with one a few months back.  I know just enough
to ask questions."

"Ah.  Well, the pam or on this one is bulu ayam, cock feather.  I don't
know enough about them to be sure about the dapur."

Toni nodded.  Pamor was an Indonesian word that described the pattern
found in the steel.  Genuine krises-sometimes spelled k-e-r-i-s--were
generally made of hammered, welded steel mixed with nickel.  When the
final grinding and staining was done to finish the weapon, the iron in
it would turn black, but the nickel would tend to stay shiny, thus
creating designs in the metal.  According to her guru, the staining
process usually involved soaking the metal in a mixture of lime juice
and arsenic,

which probably accounted for the kris's reputation as a poisoned
blade.

Dapur was the overall shape, the proportions and esthetics of the blade
combined with the handle and guard.

Krises could be straight or curved, the latter ranging from a few
undulations to more than thirty, but always, she had been told, an odd
number of waves.

For hundreds of years, especially on the larger islands, no Indonesian
boy could officially become a man until an elder, usually his father or
uncle, presented him with a kris.  More than a few were given to young
women, too.

They were not only weapons, but imbued with magic as part of their
construction.  The size, shape, pattern, time it was made, and desires
of the potential owner were all taken into account by the smith, called
an empu, who forged the weapon.  Some krises were reputed to draw fire
away from a house, protect the owner against black magic, or to rattle
in the sheath to warn of approaching danger.

Toni's heirloom, a gift from her silat teacher, was in a safety-deposit
box back in New York City.  Her guru had given it to her so that its
magic might help her get Alex.

It had apparently worked.

Too bad it hadn't worked to keep him.

Carl led her around, pointing out the various configurations of the
daggers.  They were beautiful, if you could take the time to look at
them properly.

"This is my favorite, right here," he said.  He opened the glass case,
which was not locked.  The British were a lot more trusting about such
things, Toni had noticed.  In some of the Royal museums, you could
literally touch priceless works of art with your nose, if you were that
stupid.  They just hung unprotected on the walls.

Carl took the kris and its sheath out.  He gave it a quick nod, a kind
of military bow, then held it up so she could see the designs in the
steel.

"This is a five-wave dwi wama--a two-colored, or douh-pam or--blade. 
By the guard, it's beras wutah, rice grains.  From here to the point,
it's bunt el may it--the twisted pattern called death shroud.  A very
powerful pam or this latter, particularly suitable for a warrior.

"It's a Balinese blade, they are generally longer and heavier than the
Javanese make, though it has been stained and dressed in the Javanese
style.  Solo seven-plane ukiran handle, of kemuning wood.  Look how
intricate the carved cecekan is on the inside, here and here."

He pointed at the tiny stylized faces, said to represent kala, or
protective spirits.

"According to the history, this probably belonged to a mercenary who
moved to the area of Solo, Java, from Bali, sometime in the mid-1800s.
As a mercenary, he would likely have been employed by the local
ruler."

He handed her the blade, and she took it and touched it to her
forehead, a gesture of respect her guru had taught her.  She noticed
him nod in approval at her gesture.

The sheath was an informal one, the corners rounded, the wood a light
color with a couple of darker splotches, and the shaft was covered with
a plain tube of reddish copper.

"This is your favorite?  Out of all these?  Why?"

He nodded, as if expecting the question.

"Because it's a working weapon.  It was never worn in the sash of a
maharaja, but belonged to a professional warrior.  It probably saw duty
on the field of battle, and as such, it is full of fighting spirit.
Might just be my imagination, but I can feel its power every time I
touch it."

"Too bad it's in the museum's collection," she said.

He glanced away from her.

"Actually, it's on loan to them."  He grinned.

She shook her head and returned his smile.  Of course.

It did have the feel of a fighting instrument in her hand.

Krises were stabbing weapons, with a pistol-shaped grip, this one
angled slightly inward, pointed where a thrust, if it hit a torso,
would drive it into the body's center, where it would likely find a
major organ.  The waves would gouge a wider cut as it went in, and
allow more blood to flow when it came back out.  They were ceremonial
weapons and cultural artifacts these days, but you could skewer an
enemy just as well with one now as you could two hundred years ago,
human anatomy not having changed much in the past couple million
years.

Her own weapon had been used at least once that way that she knew
of--she had seen John Howard take down a gunman who would have killed
him, had she not thrown him the kris in time.

Remembering John reminded her of her days at Net Force, though, and she
did not want to travel that path right now.

"I have trained with knives, but not the kris proper," she said.

"I know some of the methods," he said.

"I'll show you, if you want."

"Yes.  I'd like that."

"Over here, look at these, a matched pair ..."

She went along to see.  She was enjoying herself here, despite all that
had happened.  Yes, sooner or later, she was going to have to go home.
But, like Scarlett O'Hara, she could worry about that another day ...
Saturday, June 4th Seattle, Washington

Luther Ventura sat in the Koffee Me!  store in the mall near the new
entrance to Underground Seattle, holding a triple espresso.  The
textured cardboard sleeve around the paper cup allowed just enough heat
to warm his hands slightly as he inhaled the fragrant vapor wafting up
from the fluid.  The brew smelled bitter, and it was as dark as a
pedophile's sins.

He inhaled the scent, connecting to it as a wine expert might enjoy the
aroma of a great vintage.

When he was ready, Ventura sipped the espresso, let the hot liquid
swirl around his mouth a bit, then swallowed it.

Ah.

When he drank or ate, that was what he did.  He didn't read the paper,
he didn't watch television, he didn't split his attention--well, save
for the basic Condition Orange he always maintained in public, but he
had been doing that for so long it was almost a reflex.  After
twenty-five years of practice, you didn't have to think about that
consciously.

You automatically sat with your back to the wall.  You checked the
entrances and exits of any building into which you went.  You knew what
kind of construction the building was, which walls you could smash
through, which ones would likely stop a bullet.  You were always aware
of what was going on around you, tuned into the currents of who came
and who left, alert for any small sign that danger might be casting a
glare in your direction.

You expanded your consciousness, relied on all your senses, including
your hunches, tuned out nothing, but allowed yourself enough quiet that
you could experience the total reality of the place where you were.
Zanshin, the sword players called it.  The Zen of being in the moment,
no matter where you were and what you were doing, of being and not
merely doing.  To Venture's mind, this was all unthinking and basic,
absolutely necessary to a man who wanted to stay alive in the business
he'd been in.

Once upon a time, Luther Ventura had been an assassin.

And, once upon a time, he had been the best in the business.

He had worked for governments, he had worked for corporations, and he
had worked freelance.  Twenty-three years he had done it.  Seventy-six
major assignments, ninety-one people taken down in the doing of them,
and he had never failed to complete a job.

Not any longer.  He hadn't assassinated anybody in a while, and if you
didn't sharpen your edge regularly, you got dull.  Oh, he could still
run with most of the elite; his skills had been considerable and they
had not deserted him completely--but his time had passed.  Somewhere
out there was a man for whom hunting and taking human prey was a total
focus.  A man who was faster, stronger, younger, whose entire being was
wrapped around what he did, and that made him better than Ventura.  His
ego didn't want to hear that, but he wasn't going to lie to himself.

Experience could balance many things, but no fighter stayed champion
forever.  Those who tried to hang on too long always lost.  Always.

He could still do twenty chins, he could run five miles in half an
hour, and he could hit any target his weapon was capable of hitting,
but he was pushing fifty, and his reflexes weren't what they had once
been.  He wore glasses to read and, these days, he missed some of the
high notes he knew were there when he listened to a Mozart concerto or
a Bach fugue.

He could have tried to fool himself into thinking he still had all the
moves, but that was the road to hell, sure enough.

Three years ago, he had taken out a Brazilian drug dealer protected by
a hundred troops and a dozen skilled bodyguards.  The tap had been
extremely difficult and it had been perfect in every way.

Perfect.

Even if your talents never wavered, you couldn't improve on perfection.
The best you could ever do was match it, and there was no joy in that.
It was not worth the risk.  He was on the downhill slope, and the lean
and hungry days were long gone.  There weren't any old assassins, not
at the level he'd played on.  So he'd folded his cards and walked away
from the game a winner.

Sure, he had killed people recently, but those didn't count, those had
been defensive, more or less.  Once, he had gone forth and stalked.
Now he made his money  9

protecting people from other assassins.  It was, in many ways, more
difficult.  There were still challenges to be met.  That was his focus,
and while it did not have the same level of excitement, it had some
advantages.  It was legal.  It was less risky.  And although he didn't
need the money, it was lucrative.

He put the espresso down, finished.  All he needed was the first sip.
He didn't need the caffeine, didn't want the artificial mind-set that
came with it.  One sip was enough.

It was the essence of the experience, no more was necessary.

Finished with the coffee, he looked at his watch.  It was one minute
past eight a.m. He had a new client, though he was not to start
officially working for the man for several days.  But as soon as
Ventura took on a job, it occupied his attention, and he did what it
took to get into the proper mindset.

Although he was out of town for a few days, at around seven-thirty a.m.
on Saturdays his client usually arrived in Seattle via ferry and came
to this coffee shop, where he had a cup of triple espresso.  For the
next several days, Ventura would walk in his client's shoes, go where
he went and do what he did, as much as possible.  He would get to know
the man's routine, just as he had gotten to know the routines of those
he had sought out and killed.

And when he knew what he needed to know, then he would notice anything
that did not belong.

He pulled a small phone from the pocket of his gray silk sport coat. He
pressed a button on it, waited for a moment, then said, "All right.
Let's move."

The rest of his primary team--two men and two women--were in the coffee
shop or covering the street outside.  He watched the man and woman
pretending to be a married couple stand and walk arm in arm toward the
door.  Both kept their gun hands clear--the woman was dexter, the man a
sinister, so the man walked on the left, the woman the right.

Ventura tucked the phone away and surreptitiously adjusted the hidden
pistol on his hip as he stood.  The leather was a custom pancake
holster from Ted Blocker, the gun a Coonan Cadet, a stainless .357
Magnum.  The pistol had been attended to by Ventura himself, the feed
ramp throated and polished, the action slicked, custom springs
installed, with the magazines hand-tuned so there would be no failures
to feed..357s and .40s had the best record of one-shot stopsin street
shootings.  A one-shot stop meant that one round to the body put a man
out of the play.  The Coonan held seven cartridges, six in the magazine
and one in the chamber, and he carried it in condition one--cocked and
locked.  All he had to do was draw, wipe the safety, and fire.  Using
hand loads he built himself, Ventura's one-shot stops should be right
at 97 percent.  Practically speaking, you couldn't get any better than
that with a handgun.  A sub gun was better, a shotgun more so, and a
good rifle best of all, but such things were hard to carry around in
public settings, so one made do with what was available.

He had three other pistols identical to it.  If he had to shoot
somebody, the gun had to go away, and since he liked the design and
action, he had bought several, through a dummy dealer.  Three years
ago, he'd had eight of the pistols.  They were good hardware.

Of course, the mark of a good bodyguard was not having to use the
hardware.  He allowed himself a small smile as he headed for the exit.
Like a perfect crime, the best bodyguard was one you never knew
about.

He might not be the best yet, but there was still time for
improvement.

Quantiro, Virginia

"Sir?  Somebody to see you.  A Dr.  Morrison, from Washington State?"

Michaels looked up from his computer, blinking away the reading trance
he'd been in.  Morrison, Morrison ... ?

Ah, yes, he remembered.  Morrison had called yesterday, said he was in
town, and needed to speak to somebody at Net Force about a problem with
something called HAARP.  Michaels had done a fast scan of the archives
to find out that this was short for High Altitude Auroral Research
Project, a joint endeavor that involved the Air Force, Navy, and
several universities.  Something to do with microwaves or some such.
Sounded like a snorer to him.

"Show him in."

The man who followed Michaels's secretary into the office was tall,
thin, nearly bald, and looked to be about fifty.  He wore a plain black
business suit and a dark tie, and carried a battered aluminum
briefcase.  He could have passed for a professor just about anywhere.

"Dr.  Morrison.  I'm Alex Michaels."

"Commander.  I didn't expect to be meeting with the head of the
organization."

Michaels considered telling him that his assistant had quit and that
his best computer guy was tromping around in the woods somewhere with
his new girlfriend, but  E

decided it wasn't any of the man's business, and he probably wouldn't
care anyhow.

He smiled.

"Have a seat.  What can I do for you, sir?"

Morrison sat, awkward in his movement.  Not a jock, this one.

"As you may recall, I am one of the project managers on the HAARP
project."

"You're a long way from Gakona, Alaska," Michaels said.

Morrison raised an eyebrow.

"You know about the project?"

"Only where it is located, and that it has to do with the
ionosphere."

Morrison seemed to relax a little.  He opened his briefcase and
produced a mini-DVD disc.

"Here is a rundown on HAARP--I know you have a higher security
clearance than do I, but this is all pretty much public background
material."

Michaels took the disc.

"HAARP went on-line in the early nineties, has been operating on and
off since.  We are in summer hiatus just now, for repairs to equipment.
Essentially, HAARP is the world's most powerful shortwave transmitter.
It was designed to beam high-energy radio waves into the ionosphere,
and thereby to perform various experiments to learn about space
weather--for our purposes, that's basically the flow of particles from
the sun and other sources into the Earth's atmosphere.  These things
affect communications, satellites, like that."

Michaels nodded.  Yep.  A snorer.  He tried to look interested.

"The array, called the FIRI, consists of one hundred eighty antenna
towers on a grid of fifteen columns and twelve rows, on a gravel pad of
some thirty-three acres.

Each tower consists of a pair of dipole antennas that run either in the
2.8-to-7 MHz, or the 7-to-lO MHz range.

Each transmitter can generate some ten thousand watts of
radio-frequency power, and the combined raw output of the three hundred
and sixty transmitters is thus three point six million watts.  When
focused on a single spot in the sky, this is effectively multiplied a
thousand fold to three point six billion watts."

"Better than the old pirate Mexican radio stations," Michaels said,
smiling.

"By a factor of about seventy thousand," Morrison said, returning the
smile.

"So it's a very powerful system.  And ... ?"

"And there are several things we've learned along the way.  Research
has been primarily in four areas: communications, such as with
extremely low frequency waves, or ELF, for such things as contacting
submarines in the depths; tomography--the ability to see great
distances underground--and even the possibility of some rudimentary
weather control.  There have also been some experiments with pulse
generation, EMPto knock out enemy missile guidance systems, that sort
of thing."

"Interesting."

"Yes, it is.  And as a by-product of the ELF research, the possibility
of affecting and altering bio rhythms of plant and animal life has been
... explored."

Michaels frowned.

"You want to clarify that last part for me?"

"We've known for a long time that long-term radio-wave exposure can
affect people.  Increased rates of cancer under power lines and the
like.  Civilized people live in a virtual bath of non-ionizing
low-frequency waves everything electrical produces them.  At HAARP,
certain areas of research involving the 0.5-to-40Hz frequencies, the
same ones that the human brain uses, have been experimented with."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that the Navy and Air Force are very interested in the
possibility that HAARP could give them a nondestructive weapon
technology."

Michaels leaned back in his chair.

"What, are we talking about mind control?"

"It is a possibility, though not yet feasible."

This really was interesting.

"It's been a while since my last physics class.  Dr.  Morrison, but the
difference between hertz radio waves and megahertz is considerable,
isn't it?  How is it that a transmitter that produces frequencies in
the--what was it?  2.8-to-10 MHz range--will do anything in the
0.5-to-40 Hz range?"

Morrison gave him a smile as might a professor discovering a bright
student who has picked up something the rest of the class missed.

"Ah, very good.  Commander.

You are correct.  A hertz is one cycle per second, a megahertz is a
million cycles per second.  So in order for such high-frequency
broadcast energy to be, ah, stepped down by this magnitude requires a
considerable change in the length of the broadcasting antenna.
Generally speaking, an antenna must be as long as the wavelength it
transmits.

So 30 MHz waves would require a ten-meter antenna, and 30 Hz waves
would need about a thousand-kilometer antenna."

"I wouldn't think there are a lot of thousand-kilometer antennas lying
around," Michaels said.  He kept his voice dry.

"You'd be surprised.  An antenna needn't be made of steel girders--you
can make one out of coils of wire, or transmitters linked
electronically, or several other ways.

For our purposes, we use the sky itself.

"The Earth is essentially a giant magnet, surrounded by incoming cosmic
and solar radiation.  A certain number of these solar winds spiral in
and down at the magnetic poles, in what is known as the electro jet
This is what causes the aurora--the northern and southern lights.  With
HAARP, we can, in effect, turn the length of the electro jet into a
kind of antenna, and by certain electronic manipulations, make it as
long as we want, within limits, of course."

"I see.  And this means you can generate frequencies that might affect
human mental processes with a lot of broadcast power behind them, over
a long distance."

"It does."

"Are you here as a whistle-blower.  Dr.  Morrison?  I'm the wrong guy,
you want to be talking to the DOD--" "No, no, nothing like that.
There's nothing wrong with the military seeking out new weaponry;
that's part of their job, isn't it?  The Russians have been playing
with this stuff for years, and it would be foolish for our government
to ignore the potential.  It would be much better to be able to tell an
enemy to lay down his weapon and have him do it than have to shoot him,
wouldn't it?

"No, I'm here because I am certain somebody has been sneaking into our
computers and stealing the information about our experiments."

"Ah."

"Yes.  And because I don't know who might be doing it, I came to you
rather than my superiors."

Michaels nodded.  Now it made sense.

"And how is it you came to believe somebody has been stealing
information?"

Morrison smiled and took another DVD disc from his briefcase.

"They left footprints."

 Vermillion River, Lafayette, Louisiana

Michaels sat in the stern of a twelve-foot aluminum bateau, his hand on
the control arm of the little electric trolling motor.  The sluggish
waters of the bayou flowed past, the motor just strong enough to hold
the boat's backward movement to a slow drift.  The boat had been dark
green once, but was rain-and sun-faded to a chalky, lighter shade.  It
was hot here, probably in the low nineties, even on the water, and the
humidity of the air wasn't much drier than the bayou itself.  On the
shores to either side, huge live oaks loomed, gray Spanish moss hanging
down like ragged, organic curtains.  A three-foot-long alligator gar
broke the surface half a body length, fell back, and splashed the murky
water next to a bobbing incandescent lightbulb somebody had thrown in
somewhere upstream.

Michaels pulled on the rubber handle of the Mercury outboard motor's
starter.  The starter rope was nylon, and had once been white, but was
now soaked with enough two-cycle oil and grease so it was nearly black.
The fifteen-horsepower motor caught, bur bled and rumbled.

He shut off the electric, geared the Mercury, and twisted the throttle.
The smell of gasoline and lubricant enveloped him.

The bateau surged against the slow flow.  He angled toward the east
bank to avoid a half-submerged log floating toward him.  Or was that a
gator?

On the shore, a big snapping turtle sunned itself on a rock.  The
approaching boat made it nervous, and the turtle slid from the rock and
vanished into the dark water.

Michaels smiled.  Jay had done a terrific job on this scenario.  It
felt so real.

Ahead, the virtual reality construct that represented the HAARP
facility's computer system stood on the east bank of the bayou, the
image of a backwoods bar, a juke joint.

The building was wooden, painted white with a slanting, corrugated
metal roof, and the exterior walls were hung with metal beer and
soft-drink signs whose paint was flaking and peeling: Falstaff, Jax,
Royal Crown Cola, Dr.  Pepper.

A small mountain of rusting steel cans avalanched toward the riverbank
to the side of the ramshackle building.

Michaels was close enough to see that the empty cans had pairs of
triangular-shaped holes punched into the tops--opened with what his
father used to call a church key, long before pull-or pop-tops were
invented.

He guided the boat toward the shore.

Virtual reality hadn't turned out quite the way the early computer gee
ks had imagined.  With the power and input devices available, virtual
reality could be, well, virtually anything--it was up to the person who
designed the scenario.

The constructs were analogies, of course, but con 9

figured so that people could relate to them intuitively.

Normal people didn't want to push buttons or click on icons, no matter
how cute these things were.  What they really wanted was to be
surrounded by a setting in which they could behave like people. Instead
of tapping at a keyboard, they could hike a mountain trail, ride a
horse through the Old West, or--like Michaels--take a small boat down a
dark and slow-flowing bayou.  There were no limits to what you could do
in VR, save those of imagination.  You could buy off-the-shelf
software, have it custom designed by somebody who knew about such
things, or do it yourself.  Michaels was the head of Net Force, so he
had to at least have a passing familiarity with doing it himself, and
he did, but it was much easier to let Jay Gridley or one of the other
hotshot ops build them.  These guys were detail oriented, and they
really got into it.

You could go places, interact with other people, get into computer
systems, and what you saw and did might have no relationship to what
other people in the same location saw or did.  It was personal, unless
you opted for the default scenario, or agreed to a consensus reality. A
lot of people did that, picked one setting, in order to have a common
experience, but Michaels liked his or Jay's imagery better.  If you
could do it, then why not?

The bateau bumped against the pilings of the little dock, and Michaels
killed the outboard and hopped up onto the wooden planks.  He tied the
boat up and started for the bar.  From this angle, he could see the
name of the place: The Dewdrop Inn.

Oh, boy.

In reality, he was sitting in his office more than fifty years away
from this place, wearing ear and eye bands,

hands in skeletal sensory gloves, seeing and feeling the computer's
imagery, and he was aware of that on some level, though he had learned
to tune the "real" reality out, as had most people who spent any time
in VR.

Normally, he would have had Jay or one of the other serious players
investigating this.  But the truth was, he needed the diversion;
otherwise, he'd have to pack up and go home, and while work wasn't
always a cure for what ailed you, sometimes it was better than
nothing.

He ambled toward the juke joint.  A swarthy, bearded man wearing
overalls, no shirt, and no shoes leaned against the wall next to the
entrance.  The man spat a stream of chewing tobacco juice at a little
chameleon perched on a stump nearby, missed.  The man smiled, showing
gaps in his mostly rotten teeth.

In VR, fire walls came in all kinds of configurations.

Well, yeehaw, Michaels thought.  Welcome to the shallow end of the gene
pool, boy.

"Ain't open," Overalls said.

Michaels nodded.

"Uh huh.  Guess I'll have to come back later."

"Reckon so."

Michaels smiled and walked away.  He retreated to the small dock, got
into his boat, cast off, and cranked the motor.  Around the next bend
in the bayou, maybe three hundred yards farther upstream, he put back
into shore.

tied the bateau to a low-hanging willow tree branch, and hiked back
toward the Dewdrop Inn.  He circled around behind it, being careful not
to let Overalls see him.

The back door was of unpainted wooden planks, crude, but solid.  He
fished around his pocket and pulled out a skeleton key.  In reality,
the key was a password provided by Dr.  Morrison, but one couldn't
expect to have a coded keypad lock in this kind of scenario; it
wouldn't be appropriate.

The spring lock clicked open.  Michaels quickly stepped inside and
closed the door behind him.

The inside of the place was pretty much a match for the outside, a
1950s backwoods bar.  There were scarred wooden tables, beat-up
cane-bottomed bent back chairs, and a row of stools in front of a bar
that had seen decades of spilled beers and misplaced cigarettes.  Two
big rectangular coolers marked with beer logos were behind the bar, and
a single shelf under a long, cracked mirror held bottles of bourbon,
gin, sloe gin, scotch, and vodka.

It took only a minute or so for Michaels to find the built-in lockbox
under the bar, a steel plate with a huge Master Lock padlock on a
finger-thick brass hasp.

Michaels had a key to the padlock, but since he didn't know what was
normally in the lockbox, it wouldn't much matter what he'd find in it
if he bothered to look.  If something was missing, he wouldn't be able
to tell by looking.

It was dim behind the bar, light shining through two grimy windows on
the sides of the building, hardly enough to see by.  He pulled a small
flashlight from his back pocket and shined it at the lock.

Sure enough, there were fresh scratches on the lock and on the hasp.
Somebody had been at it, trying to pry or pick it open.  No way to tell
if they had managed it, but it confirmed Morrison's story, at least in
part.

Michaels stood, brushed off his hands, and started for the back door.
Morrison could have done it, of course.

Somebody yelled "Fire!"  a big part of the time he was the guy with the
match.  Then again, why bring it up?

Nobody would have noticed without Morrison's report, at least nobody in
Net Force.  And Morrison had access to the lockbox--which was, of
course, nothing more than a protected set of files inside the HAARP
computer system.

He could open it whenever he wanted, there was no need for him to break
into it.

Well.  At least it gave Michaels something to go on.

He'd have to call Morrison back, get some more specific information. It
didn't seem particularly vital, whatever was in the box, no reason to
break a leg hurrying to get to it.  There were people he could pass it
off to, or he could wait until Jay got back from his vacation; he was
only going to be gone for a week.

It had been a nice little exercise, maybe helped keep his VR muscles
from atrophying completely, but nothing earthshaking.

He could drop out of VR now and unplug, but what the hell, might as
well finish the bateau ride, enjoy the sights a little more, hey?

Monday, June 6th Mammoth Cave, Kentucky

John Howard smiled as the guide turned the lights off and the inside of
the cave went black, a darkness deeper than most people had ever seen.
The only things visible were phosphorescent or tritium watch dials, and
they seemed really bright against the inky jet so tangible you felt it
hang on you like a damp coat.

In the gloom, the guide said, "No sunlight ever gets down here, and yet
people explored this cave much farther along than we are now using only
candles and burning torches.  Before the electric lights were wired in,
every 3

body carried a lot of spare batteries and bulbs for their flashlights,
believe it."

The tourists, unseen in the dark, chuckled nervously.

Somebody punched a digital phone's keypad and a green light went on;
somebody else tapped a control on his or her wristwatch and lit the
face up.

The guide switched the lights back on, and there was a collective sigh
of relief to be able to see again.  She said, "We guides have a
standing bet that anybody leading a tour group that doesn't light a
phone or watch or even a cigarette lighter or key ring flash during the
thirty seconds of darkness here gets treated to lunches for a week.
Nobody has won the pool in six months."

Again, the small crowd laughed, a little less nervously this time.

Howard looked at his wife and son, saw Tyrone smile at his girlfriend,
Nadine--who just happened to have the same name as Howard's wife.
Howard resisted the urge to smile at how cute they looked.  Besides,
early teens were dangerous, they were either a million miles--or a
single step--away from adulthood at any given moment.

Right now, Ty and his friend were boomerang-throwing buddies.  A month
from now they could be either indifferent or trying some entirely new
game that Howard knew they were much too young to be trying.  Not that
it had stopped him from trying at their age.

Nadine--his Nadine--slipped her hand under his arm.

"Where'd you go?  You just developed the long stare."

He did smile at his wife.

"Just watching the kids."

"Feeling old?"

"Oh, yeah.  But that's only half of it.  Feeling helpless is the hard
part.  I have all this accumulated wisdom--" "You wish."

"--okay, experience, then, and Tyrone doesn't want to take advantage of
it."

"You still talk.  He still listens."

"Mostly on autopilot.  I don't think he's paying much attention to the
actual content."

"Of course not.  Did you pay much attention to what your parents had to
say at his age?  Every generation has to reinvent the wheel, hon."

"It seems like such a waste."

"But that's how it is.  Rain's gonna come down no matter what you want,
you can't stop it.  You can stay inside, go out and get wet, or take an
umbrella, the rain doesn't care."

"I knew there was a reason I married you," he said.

"Your mind."

"That's not what you used to say."

"Well, I suppose you had a couple other attractions."

"You mean you used to think so before I got fat and ugly?"

He turned and looked around behind him.

"What are you looking for?"

"For whoever you must be talking to.  You sure ain't talking to me. You
better lookin' than the day we met.

Going senile and losing your mind, maybe, but fat and ugly?  Sheeit,
woman, gimme a break."

She smiled.  He liked making her do that.  Even after more than fifteen
years, it still made him feel good.

"It's good for us to get away for a while," she said.

"I'm having a good time."

"Me, too," he said.  And he was.  He hadn't thought about Net Force for
the better part of an hour, easy.

Seattle, Washington

Morrison pushed an electronic card across the table to Ventura.

"Here is the retainer.  A hundred thousand."  He'd had to drain his
savings and take out a second mortgage on his house to get the money.
Ventura's services weren't cheap--thirty thousand a month for the basic
plan, and it went up from there--but he was supposedly the best there
was, and Morrison knew he needed the best.  He'd be broke by the end of
July if the deal didn't happen, but there wasn't any real doubt that it
would, only with whom and for how much.  He needed to stay alive until
then, of course.

Ventura took the card with its embedded credit chip, turned it in his
fingers, then tucked it into the inside pocket of his sport coat.

"Beginning when?"

"Immediately," Morrison said.

Ventura took a small phone from his pocket, touched a button, and said,
"We're on," then put the phone away.

Morrison couldn't help but look around.  The restaurant was not all
that crowded, but he couldn't see anybody who looked like a bodyguard
lurking about.

Ventura smiled.

"You won't see them."

"Them?"

"There are two opsin here with us, two more outside.

Now, I need some information if I am going to protect you properly.
Let's start with the level of threat and the reason.  Who might be
wanting to kidnap or kill you, and why?"

Morrison nodded.  Here's where it got tricky.  He could offer a good
story and probably have the man buy it.  Or he could tell the truth.
Since his life was going to be on the line, he did not want to make a
misstep here.

"I'm not certain of the 'who' yet.  Probably the Chinese, but it could
be the Russians or maybe the Israelis.  The 'why' is because I am in
possession of certain, ah, highly useful information they would like to
get their hands on."

"From HAARP?"

Morrison blinked, taken aback for a moment.  Well.  Of course, the man
would have checked him out.  And it really wasn't all that much of a
leap to that assumption.

Still, his estimate of Ventura's abilities did go up a notch.

Morrison considered his response, and while he was doing it, Ventura
said, "Doctor, I don't much care what it is you are doing, but if I am
going to keep you alive, I want to know what I am apt to be dealing
with.  It makes a big difference in how we proceed, you understand?  If
you boinked somebody's wife and he wants to beat you to a pulp, that's
one thing.  If we are going to be dealing with the secret police of a
major foreign country, that's something else.  I'll take the job either
way, but I need to know everything.  We're talking about your life, and
the lives of my crew."

Morrison nodded.  Yes.  He understood.  He took a deep breath.

"All right."  And for the next fifteen minutes, he laid it out,
answering questions as he did so.  Ventura did not take notes.  He also
did not seem disturbed to hear what Morrison had to say.

When he was done, Ventura said, "All right.  I'll need your itinerary.
Anywhere you go, I will make the travel arrangements.  In matters of
security, I am God.  If I think a situation is too risky, I will tell
you, and you will follow my recommendations without question--is this a
problem?"

"No, no problem."

"Fine.  The situation probably isn't hot yet, but we have to assume
that somebody might be able to figure out who you are, so from this
point on, we're on alert.  What are your immediate plans?"

"I have to go up to the project.  We're on hiatus, officially, but I am
running some, ah, 'calibrations."  Over the next couple of weeks, I
need to do at least two more of these.  Possibly three."

"What is the situation with security at the facility?  Can I bring my
people in?"

"No.  I can get you in as an observer from one of the universities--we
can fabricate enough background to pass the Navy and Air Force
checks--but that's it.  There are armed guards patrolling the perimeter
of the project, gates, guards at the door, and so forth.  It's not
exactly a worry that somebody is going to drop by and steal the
antennas or the generators."

Ventura nodded.

"There is one complicating factor you should know about.  The facility
and its computers are being investigated by Net Force."

"Net Force.  The FBI suspects what you've done?"

"No.  They are being guided down a path I've provided for them."

"Ah, I see.  Smart.  But they will suspect the messenger, you know,
they always do.  That's standard procedure."

"I expected they would.  I'm covered."

Ventura shrugged.

"I hope so.  I might be able to keep you from being shot by the
Chinese, but I can't keep you out of jail if you have the feds after
you--unless you are willing to go completely underground--and leaving
the country would be better."

"I understand."  Morrison felt a cold hand clutching his bowels.  He
had started down a dangerous road.  He wasn't some absentminded
professor who thought about the universe only in abstract theory; he
knew that the world was not always a nice place.  He had taken this
into account, had made the assumption that the people with whom he
would be dealing would be treacherous, as trustworthy as foxes guarding
a henhouse.  Even at this point, he could scrap the whole deal and walk
away without being caught, he was certain of it.  But no risk, no
gain--and the gain here was enormous.  People would buy a lottery
ticket when the odds were millions to one against them winning.

How many people would buy the ticket if they could get their hands on
the winning numbers before the drawing?

No, he was committed.  He was going to step very carefully, and when he
left, it wouldn't be walking, it would be in a solid gold limousine
with diamonds for headlights.

There was a price to be paid in human life, of course, but he was
willing to pay it--well... as long as it wasn't his.

 Tuesday, June 7th Sperryville, Virginia

A light rain pattered tiny wet fingers on the tent, but the rip-stop
Gortex was up to it--water beaded and ran down the roof sides in
meandering rivulets.

It was just after dawn.  Jay Gridley lay on his back watching the
drops.  He was inside the two zipped-together sleeping bags next to
Soji, his head propped on his rolled-up jacket.  She'd been right--he
hadn't been the least bit disappointed in this camping trip, no sir, no
way.  This was the best vacation he had ever had, no two ways about it.
He wasn't a fan of the great outdoors, he was much more comfortable
creating a VR version of it and plugging into that, but no matter how
good a programmer you were, you couldn't begin to approach the reality
of sex.

Nope, nossir, no way, no how.

Jay glanced over at Soji, who was still asleep.  He  E

resisted the urge to reach over and stroke her dark hair.  God, she was
beautiful.  Smart, wise, everything he could possibly want in a woman.
The only question was, how could he make it permanent?  Would she, he
wondered, laugh at him if he asked her to marry him?

Soji opened her eyes and smiled at him.

"Thinking about asking for your money back, white boy?"

"I'll have you know I'm half Thai," he said, "and that for your white
boy."  He gave her a slapped biceps and raised fist.

"And no, I wasn't thinking about asking for my money back, thank
you."

"Scenery was worth the trip?"

"All the scenery I need is here in the tent."

She laughed.

"Uh-oh, a flatterer trying to reattach me to my ego."

"Yes, ma'am, I'm a Buddhist's worst nightmare.  Listen to me, you will
fall right off the edge of the eight fold path."

"Never happen," she said.

"We Buddhists are middle-of-the-roaders, remember?"

Now he did reach out and softly run his hand through her hair.

She caught his hand, brought it to her mouth, kissed the palm.

"Hold that thought," she said.

"I'll be right back."

"Going to go and meditate in the rain?"

"No, I'm going to go pee behind the tent."

"You're ruining my image of your holy nature."

"Sorry.  You'll just have to get used to me being a lowly human."

"Like the rest of us."

She unzipped the sleeping bag and rolled out, gloriously nude.

"Well, not as lowly as some of you."

He watched her crawl out of the low-roofed tent, smiling at her tight
backside as it vanished past the mosquito netting.  They were in the
middle of nowhere, hadn't seen another soul for four days, not since
they'd left the main trail.  They could run around naked in the
sunshine--as long as they slathered themselves in sunblock and bug
dope, of course--and nobody would see them.  If it stopped raining and
there was any sunshine--and as far as he was concerned, he didn't care
if they ever left this tent except to go pee.

Jay (aughed.  Boy, had he come a long way from being a dedicated
computer op.  Going back to work had no appeal whatsoever.  This was
what life was all about.

Yes, sir.

London

Toni had rented a small place when Alex had gone back to the U.S.--she
had some money in the bank, but hotel prices in London would eat that
up in a big hurry, now that she wasn't on an expense account.  Carl had
introduced her to one of his students who had a granny flat, and the
cost was more than reasonable.  In fact, Toni wondered if maybe Carl
was somehow subsidizing it on the sly.  So far, she hadn't worked up
enough nerve to ask him--if he wasn't, he might be insulted by the
thought.

And if he was, then she'd have to move out, and that would be a pain in
the butt.

Either way, her money would be depleted by the time her visa ran out,
and she'd have to leave the country by the end of the summer.

She was sitting at the small table in the kitchen--a kitchenette,
really--when the doorbell chimed.  Who could that be?  Save for Carl
and her landlord, nobody knew she lived here.  A salesman?  Somebody
come to the wrong address?

When she opened the door, the last person she expected to see stood
there:

MI-6 agent Angela Cooper.

Toni was stunned.  The bitch!  How dare she come here?

Toni clamped a lid on the rush of anger that threatened to boil forth.
Polite might be too much to ask for, but she kept her voice even: "What
do you want?"

Cooper flashed a weak smile.  She was a beautiful woman, no doubt of
that.  Toni could see the attraction."!

need to speak to you.  May I come inside?"

"Why?  We don't have anything to talk about."

"I think we do.  Please."

Toni offered as bored a shrug as she could.

"Sure.

Come in."

Once inside.  Cooper looked nervous.  She sure as hell should be, Toni
thought.  She might be a trained secret agent, but Toni's martial
abilities were a lot sharper than what the Royal secret service would
be passing on to its operatives.  If push came to shove, she could take
Cooper--even if she had James Fucking Bond backing her up.  And she
would enjoy whacking Cooper.  A lot.

"What?"

"I won't be here but a moment or two.  Listen, I've wrestled with this
and I can't come up with any clever way to say it, so here it is, flat
out: I didn't sleep with Alex Michaels."

"No, I expect you didn't get much sleeping done."

Cooper shook her head.

"You have it wrong.  We did not have sex--is that clearer?  Not in any
way, shape, or form, not even by Clinton definition.  I wanted to, but
he turned me down."

It caught Toni flat-footed.

"What?"

"Yes, I know I made it seem as if we had, but--it didn't happen.  I
wanted to, believe it, and I tried my best, but he wouldn't go for
it."

Toni waved at the table.  This was astounding.

"You want to sit down?"  As it always did when she got flustered, her
Bronx accent came back: Ya wanna sid down

Was she telling the truth?  Had Alex put her up to this?

Cooper read her mind: "In case you are wondering, no, Alex didn't tell
me to talk to you; I haven't spoken to him since he left the country. I
heard what happened between you two.  I was going to let it pass. When
he wouldn't do me, I was, well, a bit put out, so I decided to sting
you a little by letting on that he had.  I suppose I wanted you to take
him to task, make him squirm a bit.

But despite his rejection, I did like Alex, and it isn't really fair to
make him suffer because he was doing right by you."

"Alex didn't deny it when I brought it up," Toni said.

"I don't understand why not.  It had been a long day.

We had supper in a pub.  He had one beer too many, and I offered to
give him a massage.  But that was as far as it got.  He was half-asleep
facedown on the massage table when I stripped and tried to get him to
have it off with me.  I was ready--and it was obvious he was ready,
too-but instead of his willie, he waved you in my face."

She paused, took a deep breath, and went on.

"I was furious.  And I resented you for having him, so that's why I did
what I did.  I'm sorry.  That's it."

She turned and started for the door.

Toni had trouble finding her voice, barely made it before the woman got
the door open.

"Angela?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you for telling me.  It couldn't have been easy."

Cooper smiled, more genuine this time.

"I'd rather be having a bloody root canal.  You're lucky to have a man
like that interested in you.  Maybe you can patch things up."

When she was gone, Toni sat at the table, staring at the wall.  Why
hadn't he just told her?  He knew she thought he'd slept with Cooper;
all he had to do was deny it, she would have believed him.  At least
she thought she would have believed him.  Why hadn't he spoken up?

She replayed their last meeting, trying to remember exactly how it had
gone.  Had he ever actually said he'd been with Cooper?

No... Well, shit!  What the hell was wrong with him!  Why had he let
her think he'd done it!

Abruptly, Toni felt the emotions well, and tears spill.

Dammit, Alex!

She was angry all over again, but this time for an entirely different
reason.  What on Earth could he have been thinking?

 Wednesday, June 8th Gakona, Alaska

"Is that where we're going?"  Ventura had to raise his voice for
Morrison to hear him.  Normally, a plane like the Cessna Stationair was
not that noisy while cruising, but this one had a slightly warped door
edge on the passenger side that added a loud almost-whistle.

"That's the place," Morrison said.

Ventura looked down from what he guessed was about eight thousand feet.
Most of what he saw looked like virgin evergreen forest.  In the
distance was a snowcapped mountain range with a few very tall peaks.
The HAARP site itself was cut out of the forest--it was as if somebody
had cleared a large area in woods in the rough shape of a skeleton key.
Several buildings and a parking lot in a ragged circular area were
connected by a straight road to the array itself--which looked as if
somebody had planted seeds that grew up to be giant 1950s-style
television antennas.

Beyond that was a second rectangular array, as large as the first.
Behind the control buildings and just coming into view was a long,
straight paved strip a couple of thousand feet long.

The pilot banked the plane slightly, then throttled back as he
straightened the Cessna out.

"We've got our own landing strip now," Morrison said.

"Better security.  It wasn't a problem when they built the
place--anybody could just walk up to the front gate, they even had open
house every now and then--but there was some ugly vandalism by
eco-terrorists, so now there's a big chain link fence and armed
military guards.  The nearest town, such that it is, Gakona, is over
that way. There's a post office, a gas station, a motel and a couple of
bed-and-breakfast places, a restaurant, a bar, like that.  They get a
lot of tourists, hunters, and fishermen up here.  If you want, you can
get a dogsled custom-made for you here, too, but if you are looking for
nightlife, this isn't the place.  Forty-nine permanent residents."

Ventura nodded.  He had been in backcountry towns so small and isolated
that a big topic of conversation on a Sunday morning was the size of a
particularly large icicle hanging from a bar awning.

"Gets a little chilly for street dancing," Ventura said.

It was not a question, though Morrison treated it as such.

"Yes, it drops to forty or fifty below in the dark of winter, and
usually there are a couple feet of white fluffy powder on the flats,
piled higher against the buildings.

Sometimes the wind blows hard enough to scour the ground clean in
places, though.  Plays hell with the runners on your snow machine when
you hit one of those."

Ventura smiled politely.  He had done some background research before
they'd flown into Anchorage.  He probably knew more about the terrain
and local country than Morrison did, but he didn't let on.  In almost
every situation, knowledge was power, and because you worked for a man
didn't mean that you trusted him.

From what he had learned, the HAARP site was a hundred and some odd
miles northeast of Anchorage, almost to the Wrangell Mountains, the
high range that divided Alaska from the Canadian Yukon.

He already knew that the nearest town was Gakona, and that it was about
fifteen miles north and west of the town of Glennallen, which wasn't
exactly a major metropolis itself.  Up here, people gave directions
differently than in a city--the Sourdough Motel, for instance, was at
Milepost 147.5--you didn't need to say which road, there weren't so
many you'd get confused.  Gakona was on the Glenn Highway, though the
locals called it the Tok CutOff, a couple of miles from the Richardson
Highway intersection.

The town, what there was of it, was near the confluence of the Copper
and Gakona rivers.  The original inhabitants were Ahtna Indians, though
few of them lived here now.  Few of anybody lived here now.  During the
busy season, there were more people working at the HAARP site than
lived in town.  People who chose to be up here enjoyed the great
outdoors, and they were either hardy or they didn't stay.

The landing strip at the site was new, and according to his research,
there wasn't a commercial airport closer than Gulkana, a few miles
south of Gakona.  No railroad, and the roads called highways were more
like state roads.

A hundred years ago, somebody had built a roadhouse, the Gakona Lodge,
and it was still there, now a restaurant.

If you didn't work for HAARP--or against it, and there were some who
did that, work against it--you came up here to hunt, fish, hike, canoe,
kayak, ski, or snowboard.

There were a couple of paramedics with the volunteer fire department,
but no hospitals, clinics, or doctors around, so if you chain sawed
your foot off, you were shit out of luck.

The pilot, who was a grizzled man of maybe fifty, lined up on the
narrow runway and dropped his airspeed.  A lot of these bush pilots
were experts, and this one was better than most at flying this little
bird, because after he'd left the Navy, where he'd flown jets off and
onto an aircraft carrier, he had flown crop dusters for a living down
in central California.  Ventura had checked him out, too.

When you took on a client, you didn't take any chances-you examined
everybody who got within rifle range of your charge if you could pull
it off.  It was easier up here in the middle of nowhere, at least
insofar as the numbers went.  And it wasn't that hard to do, much
easier than a lot of people realized.

Ventura subscribed to a computer investigative service.

You logged onto the site, gave them your password and the name of
whoever or whatever you wanted to know about, and within a few minutes,
usually, they came back with as extensive a report as was available.
The service had access, however legally, to social security, state
motor vehicle departments, credit bureaus, police computer nets, and a
bunch of others they wouldn't talk about.  It was an expensive service,
but they were pretty good.  Not perfect--all they had on Ventura
himself was what he allowed anybody to have on him--but as good as you
were going to find outside of a serious spook shop.  Good enough to
track and define most honest people.  Spotting the others was his
job--if it took one to know one, he certainly ought to know a
shooter.

The pilot brought the plane in smoothly, didn't even hop once when he
touched down, and taxied toward a wind sock on a steel post next to a
corrugated metal shed with a very steeply angled roof.

Once they were out with their bags, the pilot headed from the apron
back to the runway, never even killing his engine.

It was warm--high seventies or low eighties, Ventura figured.

Morrison said, "Didn't think it would be so warm, eh?"

"Actually, I was wondering where the mosquitoes were.

They're usually pretty bad this time of year in the lake valleys."

Morrison blinked, apparently surprised that Ventura wasn't surprised by
the temperature.

"Um.  Well, the DOD has a guy who comes out and fogs the site every now
and then.  The mosquitoes are worse away from here.  So, you've been to
Alaska before?  Why didn't you say so?"

"It never came up," Ventura said.  He smiled.

"Um.  Come on, I'll show you the setup.  There's a fuel cell cart in
the shed; it's a mile or so to the front gate from here.  We'll
ride."

Ventura nodded.  He adjusted the pistol in his belt holster.

It had been there since they'd left Seattle.  There were half a dozen
ways he knew of to avoid having to pack your weapon in your luggage.
People who thought you couldn't carry a gun onto a commercial jet were
only fooling themselves.

Fooling himself was not Ventura's game.

1-80, just northwest of Laramie, Wyoming

"Wow, look how big they are!"

Tyrone glanced away from the small herd of buffalo penned next to the
truck stop, and at Nadine.

"Yeah.  I've seen vids, but you don't get the reality of it.  They
stink, too."  In the heat of the early afternoon, the dry air carried
the musky, dusty odor of the animals.  It was kind of hard to say
exactly what it smelled like, but it wasn't something you smelled on a
street in Washington, D.C. This was a fairly level spot, but they were
into the northern Rocky Mountains now, and it was a lot slower going in
the big RV than it had been on the flatlands of Kansas.

He and Nadine stood next to the tall wooden rail fence bounded by a
single wire plastered with warnings that it was electrified, and not to
touch it, not more than twenty or thirty feet away from the nearest
buffalo as it chewed on hay or something.  As they watched, the
creature let loose a big dump, clumps of brown and yellowish stuff
plopping onto the ground under its tail.  It never even lifted its head
from its grazing.  Poot and eat at the same time.

Yuk.

"Puuwee!"  Nadine said.

Before it had smelled kind of rank, but now it really stunk.

"Yeah, well, I'm impressed.  No wonder they wiped them out.  Come on,
let's get upwind," he said.

Behind them, the thirty-foot-long RV Tyrone's dad had borrowed from an
admiral he knew was parked at the gas pumps, sucking up fuel.  The
thing would hold like fifty or sixty gallons in the tank, and it needed
it, because it got only eight or ten miles to the gallon.  On a round
trip that was probably going to run almost six thousand miles, the RV
was going to drink a lot of gasoline.  Even with the new clean-burn
technology and the solar-assist panels, the RV was a big old tank, big
as a bus, and it lumbered along like a dinosaur.  Of course, it was
huge on the inside.  There was a bedroom in the back with a queen-sized
bed, where his mom and dad slept.  A bathroom with a shower and toilet
and sink, lots of closet space, and even a tiny bedroom up front that
pulled out from one side of the main body like a drawer when they were
stopped.  Nadine slept in that little room behind one of those plastic
accordion doors.  Plus there was a dining area with a table, a kitchen
with a stove, fridge, sink, microwave oven, and a pretty good-sized TV
set and computer, with an automatic track-and-lock sat dish on the roof
that caught narrow cast audio-vid, and tele com signals.  You could sit
there and eat a bowl of Haagen-Dazs pineapple-coconut ice cream and
watch entcom stuff, or log onto the net, all while your dad was driving
down the interstate at sixty.  Pretty amazing.

A lot more fun than being cooped up in the back of the family Dodge.
Although being cooped up hip-to-hip with Nadine wouldn't be so bad. She
wasn't gorgeous, but she was smart, athletic, and definitely female.

There was a couch behind the passenger seat that pulled out into a bed,
and that was where Tyrone slept.  He'd gotten used to it after the days
on the road, and it was almost as comfortable as his bed at home.  His
dad had said it ought to be, since the RV had cost the admiral as much
as they'd paid for their house.

He saw his mom and dad coming back from the direction of the truck
stop.  They had a couple of big paper bags and a cardboard carrier of
soft drinks.  This was a treat, since Mom usually cooked in the RV.

"There's a place to park around the side of the buffalo pen," his dad
said.

"We can eat and watch the buffalo roam."  He rattled the bags.

"Flawless," Tyrone said.

"As long as it's not downwind."

The fries were good, the onion rings really good, and the burgers had a
kind of smoky, odd flavor.  Not bad, but different.  Tyrone swallowed a
bite of the burger and said, "They cook burgers kinda differently out
here."

His father smiled.

"It's not how they cook them, it's what they make them out of."

Tyrone looked at him.

"Huh?"

His father pointed out the window over the table and grinned real
big.

Tyrone looked at the buffalo.  He looked at his burger.

Ah... Both Nadines laughed.

All of a sudden Tyrone wasn't that hungry.  Then again, he was going to
eat this burger, and he would do it if it killed him.  No way was he
going to let his dad get this one, no... way.

He smiled, took a big bite, and smiled again, mouth full.

"Good.  I love it."

 Wednesday, June 8th Washington, D.C.

Michaels felt as if he were a thousand years old and mostly turned to
dust as he held the phone's receiver in a death grip that threatened to
break his hand or the instrument.

He kept his voice as light as he could.

"... really great, Dadster, and all the kids in my class love him."

His daughter was talking about Byron Baumgardner, a teacher at her
school in Boise--and his ex-wife Megan's boyfriend.

No, not boyfriend--fiance.  They were getting married at the end of the
month.  And they wanted to have Byron the bearded wonder adopt his
daughter, move in and take over as her father, and deny Michaels
visitation--if he allowed it.

Needless to say, Michaels had not been invited to the wedding.

His initial inclination had been to fight it to the death-preferably
Megan and Byron's death.  He didn't like either of them right now, and
at their first meeting had put the bearded wonder on his ass when the
man had grabbed him.  Megan had been doing her usual slash-and-burn
number on him, and when he'd said something back in an angry retort,
dear young Byron had taken it upon himself to defend her honor. Without
thinking about it, Michaels had decked the man, thus proving that the
silat he'd been learning actually worked.

In retrospect, that had been a mistake, but boy, it sure felt good at
the time.

Well, Byron the bearded wonder would find out about how much honor his
new love had the first time he crossed her--Megan fought dirty, always
had.  Michaels had overlooked that for a long time, blaming himself for
a lot of their troubles, but eventually he realized it wasn't all his
fault.  Yeah, he had spent too much time at the office, and yeah, he
could withdraw into his own head and not engage even when he was home,
but he had been a good father, and when Megan started throwing the
lousy-dad crap in his face, it was hard to smile and shrug it off.

But would taking his ex and her new love to the legal mat and trying to
choke them out benefit Susie?  How would an ugly custody battle affect
her?  Sure, kids were resilient, they could bounce back after really
nasty trauma--mental, physical, whatever--but did he want to be the one
who caused that trauma?

No.  Even if it was mostly Megan's doing, she was going to be the
person who got Susie out of bed every day,

the person Susie would come crying to when she fell and skinned her
knee, the person who could, with a few well-chosen words, plant a lot
of lies about dear old dad that would slowly and surely turn his
daughter against him.

And he wouldn't put it past Megan, not after what he'd learned about
her after they had split up.  She had a mean streak, and it was a lot
wider and deeper than he'd ever imagined it could be.

Getting into a tussle with her mother over Susie's affections would be
a losing proposition, no question.  At least until she became a
teenager and rebelled ... Susie, now eight, continued to talk about
what a swell guy Byron was, and as much as he didn't want to agree with
that, Michaels didn't say so.  Poisoning a well was never a good idea
in his mind, you never knew if somebody you loved might drink from
it--or if you might have to drink from it yourself someday.  Susie was
going to be living with the man, and what good would it do her to be in
the middle of a pissing match between her real father and the new
stepdad?

What harm might it do her?

Truth was, Byron probably was a nice guy.  If he'd met him away from
Megan, he suspected he wouldn't have had any problems with him.  Yeah,
he'd been out of line when he got between a divorced couple in a
long-running fight he didn't understand, but he would have done the
same thing in Byron's place.  Michaels had been ragging on
Megan--justifiably so, in his mind--but what kind of man were you if
you didn't step up to protect your woman?  Even if she was in the
wrong?

Or even if she was somebody like Toni, who could protect herself better
than you could?

Michaels shook his head.  Toni isn't your woman anymore.

Don't go there.

"So when are you coming to see me, Dadster?"

"Pretty soon, Li'l Bit.  Next month."

Yeah, next month.  Friday, July 1. The day of the first round of the
custody hearings.  His lawyer, Phil Buchanan, was confident they could
win, or at least stall things for a long time, or so he said.  But the
question was: Did he really want to do that?

"Spiffy!  Did Morrister tell you that Scout caught a rat?"

"A rat?"  Scout was a toy poodle Michaels had come by when an assassin,
a woman disguising herself as an old lady walking her dog, had used the
little beast as part of her subterfuge.  Fortunately for him, the dog
had barked at just the right time, saving his life.  He'd thought about
keeping the pooch, but figured he needed more attention than he could
give a pet, so now Scout was his daughter's companion.

"Oh, yeah, we heard them fighting under the porch last night and then
Scout came out dragging it by the neck!

It was a big rat, all brown and bloody, and it was dead, but he bit
Scout on the leg, so we had to take Scout to the vet to get a shot so
he wouldn't get rat disease.  He's okay, though."

The idea of the toy poodle tangling with a wood rat and coming out the
winner was amusing.  When he'd lived there, Michaels had used D-Con or
traps to keep the rat and mice population down.  That was a long time
ago, in a galaxy far away ... "I gotta go.  Daddy.  Daddy-B is coming
over to take us to the new IMAX 3-D.  I love you."

"I love you, too, honey.  Bye."

Michaels stared at the phone.  Daddy-B.

Well, okay, sure, what was she going to call him?  An eight-year-old
using his first name somehow wasn't right, but "Daddy-B"?

Michaels sure as hell didn't need to hear that, regardless of what was
best for his child.  That wasn't right, either.

So, what was he going to do about all this?  He had only a few weeks to
decide, and the decision would affect him and his daughter for the rest
of their lives.

Wasn't that just one more straw his camel didn't need.

His life had become a damned soap opera.

London

"Are you sure?"  Carl asked.

Toni nodded and sighed.

"Yes.  I have to go."

They were in Carl's silat school, which occupied the second floor of a
four-story building between a tandoori restaurant and a boarded-up
charity shop in a less-than-posh section of town called Clapham.  The
school was bare-bones, old wooden floors and a few mats, rundown, but
kept spotlessly clean by students offering hormat and adat--basically
honor and respect--to their instructor.

The first evening class would be starting in about an hour, and the
students who volunteered to sweep and mop the floors would be there
soon.

Carl nodded in return.

"I understand."

Impulsively, Toni put her hand on his chest.  Under the thin white
T-shirt, the muscle was tight and warm.

"Thank you.  I appreciate all you've taught me."

He caught her hand with his, pressed it against his pectoral a bit
harder.

"It has been mutual.  Listen, if things don't go well with your Mr.
Michaels, let me know soonest, would you?"

"I will."

"I have occasion to visit the States now and then.  I'd be pleased to
see you there whether this works out with Alex or not."

"I'd like that," she said.

"Are you going to stay for class?"

"No, I need to get packed.  My flight leaves early in the morning."

He nodded again.

"I'll miss you."

"I'll keep in touch, I promise."

He bent and kissed her gently on the lips, leaned back, and smiled.

"Travel safely," he said.

Toni nodded and smiled.  Carl was a path not taken, at least not fully,
and she had a feeling she would always wonder how it would have been to
travel that way.

Back at her flat, Toni looked through the things she had gathered
during her weeks in the country.  Some of it would fit into her bag.
Some of it she could have shipped if she wanted.  Most of it would stay
here.  A coffeemaker, a blender, a small microwave oven--they would be
useful for the next tenant.  What she would mostly take would be her
memories, and now they were jumbled in a way she had to reconsider.
Alex hadn't slept with Cooper, whatever his reasons for allowing her to
think otherwise.

It made a difference to her, and she had to resolve it.

She could have had her com receive his daily call.  Could make the
connection herself and ask him about it from thousands of miles away.
No risks to that.  But no long-distance voice, even complete with a
video image, was enough for such a conversation.  She needed to be able
to see into his eyes, watch him closely, pick up the little movements
of his body language, to touch, smell, maybe even taste him.  She
didn't kid herself that she could always tell if somebody was lying to
her, but she thought she could tell if Alex was lying, if he was
standing right in front of her and if she was looking for it.  So if
what Cooper had said was true, if he hadn't cheated on her, then what
would that mean?  She had left him, quit her job, and if she had done
it because she had made a mistake--it was a very big fucking mistake.
If she had been that wrong, then what did that say about 'her?

She had to know.  One way or another.  And if she had to swim across an
ocean and then walk the rest of the way when she got to dry land, then
that was what she was going to do.

The doorbell chimed.

A deliveryman dressed in blue shorts and a matching shirt and cap stood
there, holding a small package.  She signed for it, then went back
inside.  What could this be?

Inside the box, enveloped in fat green plastic bubble-wrap, was an
eight-inch-tall, dark.  blue glass bottle, about as big around as a
cardboard toilet tissue tube.  There was a small sheet of print
rubber-banded to the cylinder, and a note in the box.  The note said,
"Toni--I thought you might be able to use this.  It won't do anything
for your ego or your soul, but it might help with external aches and
pains.  Cheers, Carl."

The sheet of print turned out to be instructions for using what was
inside the blue bottle: Balur Silat, also called Tjimande Silat, or if
you liked the newer spelling, Cimande, where the "C" was pronounced the
same way as the "Tj."

Toni grinned.  Balur Silat was a training aid, coupled with
conditioning devices like padded punching and kicking targets.  Toni
didn't use it much anymore, but she still had a striking ball that Guru
had made for her years ago.

It was an old athletic sock with about three pounds of copper-coated
steel BBs in it, the kind used by air guns.

The BBs were tied off in the toe of the sock, which was then clipped to
make a globe about the size of a baseball.

This was then wrapped tightly with layers of duct tape.

What you did with this was to punch it, or hold it in one hand to bang
it against your forearms or elbows or shins, to help get them used to
being hit.

Balur Silat was a blend of coconut oil and different roots and herbs, a
concoction that took about a month to make.  You ground the herbs up,
cooked and mixed them together, put the resulting goop into a dark
glass bottle, and stored it in a dark cool place for months, or even
years, to age.

After a bruising session of bone-to-bone contact during a workout,
battered shins and forearms were common.

Like the Chinese herbal remedy Dit da jow, or "iron hit wine," the
classic Indonesian preparation was said to be a great help.  Literally,
balur means "to crystallize" or "to harden."  The stuff was solid at
room temperature and had to be heated slightly to liquefy.  The
liniment thus created was used to help speed healing of bruises, and to
help to condition and toughen the skin.  There were practitioners of
some fighting arts who had shins so hard and impervious to impact they
could break baseball bats over them without apparent harm or pain. Toni
had seen a picture of an old Serak stylist who could do that once, and
she had no desire to have her shins scar and knot and wind up looking
like his; still, a certain amount of conditioning was a good idea, and
Balur Silat was a help, though finding the authentic stuff wasn't
easy--every other guru out there had his or her own recipe, and some
were better than others.  She was pretty sure that Carl Stewart's stuff
would be decent.

She hefted the bottle.  If it would work on bruised egos, the maker
could name his price and retire rich in a few days.  She smiled again,
and went back to her packing.

 Thursday, June 9th Gakona, Alaska

Morrison had given Ventura the tour of the facility, but the man hadn't
seemed too awed or even interested by anything, other than the main
power generators.  Those were fairly impressive.  The power building,
more than twenty thousand square feet of it, was constructed originally
to house a huge coal-fired steam generator that was to run an Air Force
Over the Horizon Backscatter Radar installation originally sited here.
At the termination of the OTH-B program and the shift to HAARP, the
steam generation gear was hauled off, and the backup diesel generators
were used instead.  They had plenty of power to operate the transmitter
and the ISR.  Originally, HAARP had been tapped into the local power
grid for lights and heating and like that, but interruptions during
really bad weather were sometimes a problem--nobody much enjoyed
sitting in the cold and dark even if the transmitter still worked, so
the local grid was eventually switched over to their own generators. 
Power-wise, they were self-sufficient--as long as the monster fuel tank
was kept filled.

Morrison could understand why Ventura wasn't all that impressed--a lot
of the older buildings that were supposed to have been temporary were
still there, and they weren't anything to write home about.  These were
no more than trailers with cheap wood paneling and external conduits
for switches and electrical plugs, beat-up old computers and monitors,
steel desks and press-board filing cabinets.  Not what you thought of
as cutting edge.

Still, impressing Ventura was not the point.  Running the next test
was.

Which was what he was about to do.  He had another target, and the
conditions were as good as they were going to get this time of year, so
he was ready to begin.

Ventura stood behind him, wearing a disguise that ought to fool anybody
here into thinking he belonged-black polyester slacks over brown
loafers, a white shirt with a pen protector in the pocket, an ugly
vest, uglier tie, and dark plastic rimmed glasses.  A perfect geek.

There was a gun tucked under the vest, Morrison was certain, but even
though he knew it was there, he couldn't see it.

The controls in the auxiliary trailer worked as well as the main ones,
but they were less likely to have unexpected visitors here, and
unexpected they would be if any showed up.

Morrison said, "With our computers up, and if the sunspot activity
isn't too bad, we can hit the mark ninety-eight times out of a
hundred."  He adjusted a control, and a liquid crystal display of
numbers flashed new digits.

He and Ventura were alone in the HAARP auxiliary control room.  The ACR
was where Morrison usually conducted his calibrations and, in this
case, an unauthorized use of the equipment.  The thing was, you
couldn't tell by looking where the energy generated by the array was
going.

Since the project was shut down for the summer, except for maintenance
and calibrations, no real scientists would be looking over his
shoulder--and the guards wouldn't have a clue what he was really
doing.

In his guise as a geek scientist, Ventura chuckled.

Morrison frowned.

"Something funny about that?"

Ventura said, "In some circles, ninety-eight percent accuracy is
considered failure."

Morrison adjusted another dial, then turned to look at Ventura, the
question apparent in his raised eyebrows.

"In the late 1800s, there was a trick shooter named Adolph "Ad'
Topperwein.  In December of 1906, he decided to try for a record.  He
had a sawmill in San Antonio, Texas, make up a bunch of wooden cubes,
two-and-a-quarter-inches square."

"A bunch?  There's a scientific term."

"Give me a minute, I'll get there."

Ventura held his thumb and forefinger apart, about the thickness of a
modestly fat reference book.

"Blocks were about so, a little bigger than a golf ball."

Morrison glanced at his control board, tapped a key.

The computer screen scrolled more numbers.

"Fine.  So?"

"So, Ad went to the San Antonio Fair Grounds with a couple of relays of
throwers, some official witnesses, three Winchester M-03 self-loading
.22 rifles, and a--here's that word again--bunch of ammunition.  He had
his assistants stand about twenty-five feet in front of him.  They
tossed a block high into the air, and he snapped off a shot, only one,
per block.

"He shot more than fourteen hundred of the little blocks before he had
a miss.  After that, he went more than fourteen thousand straight, hit
every one."

"Jesus.  That's a bunch, all right."

"Not yet it isn't.  He did this for a week, seven hours a day.  At the
end of that time, he had fired at fifty thousand blocks.  Of fifty
thousand tries, he missed exactly... four."

"Good Lord," Morrison said.

"With a rifle?  Not a shotgun?"

Morrison had done some target shooting as a boy with his father's .22
rifle.  The idea of hitting fifty thousand blocks sitting on a table at
twenty-five feet and only missing four was amazing.  To hit them flying
through the air?  That was astounding.

Ventura smiled.

"It gets better.  He was averaging more than a thousand blocks an hour,
one every three and a half seconds or so, and so he finished ahead of
schedule-he had allowed himself ten days.  He had the record and could
have quit, but he didn't.  Instead, he had his assistants salvage some
of the least-damaged blocks, got more ammo, and started shooting again.
He was getting a bit tired after a week of constant shooting, so his
tally fell off a little, but he shot for three more days.

"All totaled, he fired at seventy-two thousand, five hundred blocks.
His final score was seventy-two thousand, four hundred and ninety-one.
He missed nine.

"Sixty-eight and a half hours of point-and-shoot.  Although there have
been shooters who have actually potted more blocks since, none of them
have done it under the same conditions, so the record still stands.  I
have a picture of Topperwein, in a black suit--with a tie--boots, and a
campaign hat, sitting atop a mountain of shot-up blocks, his rifle
cradled in his arm."

Morrison shook his head.

"I can't even imagine waggling my finger seventy thousand times, much
less maintaining enough concentration to shoot accurately that many
times."

"Frankly, neither can I. Topperwein was the best exhibition shooter who
ever lived.  But he was also a relatively uneducated man from a little
town in Texas, using bare-bones .22 rifles, no laser sights, no
shooting glasses, no electronic hearing protection, nothing.  Not
exactly what you'd call high tech, and his accuracy percentage was
.99988.  More than a hundred years later, with all of this"--he waved
one hand to take in the computer gear-"at your command, you'd think you
could improve on target shooting."

Morrison considered that.  Yes, you'd think so.  Then again, with a tap
of a single finger, he could drive seventy thousand people mad in a few
hours.  No man with a rifle could begin to match that.

Morrison powered up the system for his "test."  Warning buzzers started
to sound, a red light flashed on and off on the control board.  He
reached for the control, a covered button.  The buzzers continued their
howl, the lights their strobe, as he raised the cover, then pressed the
button.

/ got your blocks of wood right here, pal... Multnomah Falls, Oregon

John Howard stood by the stone restaurant watching his family look at
the thin ribbon of water cascading down from a great height to splash
into a cold pool at the base of the cliff.  They were about twenty-five
or so miles outside of Portland, in the Columbia River Gorge, looking
at one of the highest waterfalls in the country, more than a
six-hundred-foot drop in the second stage here.  It was beautiful,
though more impressive in the spring as the snowmelt fed the tributary
a lot more water.

Everything was damp here, lots of moss and mold, fed by the constant
spray off the falls.

Howard reached for the virgil--the virtual global interface
link--hooked to his belt.  This was a great toy, not much bigger than a
standard pager or small cell phone, and it not only had a com, it was a
working GPS, clock, radio, TV, modem, credit card, camera, scanner, and
even a tiny fax that produced weave wire hardcopy.  There were civilian
models, but the military units were better--at least for now. Sharper
Image was gaining, or so he had heard.

Sergeant Julio Fernandez appeared on the virgil's tiny screen,
smiling.

"Congratulations, General.  I didn't think you'd make it this long.  I
guess one of the others will win the pool."

"I am merely calling to check in.  Sergeant."

"The country is getting along fine without you, sir.  No wars, no
terrorists taking over at Quantico--well, if you don't count the new
feeb recruits--and the Republic endures."

"I just wanted to let you know where I was."

"John, your GPS sends us a homing signal as long as it's got power,
remember?  We know where you are.  You want me to give you your
longitude and latitude?"

"Nobody likes a smart-ass NCO, Julio."

"C'mon, you're on vacation.  Relax.  Enjoy yourself.  I'll call if the
Swiss or the French decide to invade the country, I promise."

Howard made a suggestion that was anatomically impossible and unlikely
for a heterosexual even if it had been possible.

Fernandez laughed.

"That's a discom, General.  Adios."

Howard smiled as he rehooked the virgil to his belt.

Well, yes, he did sometimes think things would go to hell if he left
town.  So he was a worrier, what could he say?

Nadine and the children were hot to climb up to the little bridge
closer to the falls, and Howard went along.

It was all part of the ambience, to get wet, wasn't it?

As they hiked up the damp macadam path, he recalled the first time he'd
ever been to this part of the country.

Back in '99 or '00, in the late fall or early winter.  A friend of his
from the army, Willie Kohler, had scored some two hundred buck tickets
to a boxing match out on the coast.

Not the best seats, but pretty good, only about fifty or sixty feet
from the ring.  It was in one of those Indian casinos that the local
tribes had put up.  Chinook something?

Chinook Winds, that was it.  In Lincoln City.

He remembered the event better now that he thought about it.  They had
given it some silly name, like the Rumble in the Jungle or the Thrill
in Mantilla, it was ... ah, yes.  Commotion at the Ocean.  He and
Willie had gotten some funny mileage out of that one.

He wasn't the world's biggest boxing fan, but he'd done a little in the
service when he'd been younger, fighting camp matches as a
light-heavyweight and giving about as good as he got.  No future there
for him, getting bashed in the face, but he didn't mind watching
somebody with real skill demonstrate it.  As he remembered, there had
been six or eight matches at the casino, all fairly low weight classes,
and a couple of them were championship bouts.  The most interesting
fights had been on the under card.  Some black kid from Washington,
D.C-, with sweet moves had put his man down in the second round.  And
there had been a couple of female fighters, one a little girl in red, a
featherweight, all of a hundred and twenty-two or -three pounds, who
had great hands--and great legs, too.  Only her third pro fight, but
she had real boxing skills.  Of course, this was back when boxing
wasn't considered a brutal crime against humanity, and women were just
getting into it.  And when it still wasn't too politically incorrect to
admire a woman's legs ... What he remembered most of all was that they
played bad rap music--if that wasn't redundant--between each fight, and
it was way, way too loud.  Earmuffs should have been mandatory; it was
noisier than a shooting range, and probably less musical.  After the
second or third fight, he and Willie were ready to go and kick out the
damned speakers to kill the noise.  But like at gun shows, you needed
to be polite at a big boxing match--you never knew but that guy you
just sloshed your beer on might have been the number one contender for
the cruiser weight title a few years back, and no matter what
self-defense system you knew, a good pro boxer was going to get at
least a couple of shots in if he smiled--and then threw the first
punch.

Howard smiled as they climbed into the waterfall mist.

There was a lot of green on the hillside now--moss, ferns, all kinds of
water-loving plants.

Julio was right, he needed to relax and enjoy his vacation.

His son was growing up, and pretty soon he'd be a lot more interested
in girls and cars than boomerangs and family trips.  Might as well
enjoy it while he could.

He was out in the Wild West, nothing of any major military importance
was apt to happen here, certainly nothing he needed to worry about.

Nadine looked back at him and smiled.

"Isn't this fun?"

"Yep," he said, "it is."

 Thursday, June 9th Quantico, Virginia

Jay Gridley wasn't exactly thrilled about having to go back to work.
Yeah, sure, it was what he did, and yeah, sure, he loved it, but
rolling around with Soji, even in a drafty tent in the rainy woods?
Well, that had work beat all hollow.

He never thought he'd hear himself think that, but there it was.

Truth was, even though he was dropping by the Net Force compound late
Thursday afternoon, he didn't really have to be back until Monday.  But
Soji had clients she had to counsel, and she refused to take a laptop
or net phone with her into the woods, so they had packed up the camping
gear and came back to civilization.  In her net persona of the old
Tibetan priest Sojan Rinpoche, Soji taught basic Buddhism and also
offered a kind of psycho E

spiritual first aid to people who had suffered various forms of brain
damage, usually secondary to drugs or stroke.

That was how they'd met, on-line, when Jay had been zapped while
chasing the guy with the quantum computer.

Soji had an apartment in Los Angeles, but she was going to be working
out of Jay's place, at least for now.

And he hoped he could convince her to make it permanent, though he
hadn't yet worked up the nerve to ask her to move in, much less to
marry him.  But he was gonna.

Eventually.

Commander Michaels was in his office when Jay got there.  He waved at
the receptionist.

"He busy?"

"No, go ahead in."

Jay tapped at the door, then opened it.

"Hey, Boss."

"Jay?  What you doing here?  You're not supposed to be back until
Monday.  How did it go?"

"The mosquitoes got so bad we had to come back for a transfusion. Other
than that, it went great.  How's business?"

"Slow.  Nothing major.  Usual net scams, viruses, illegal porno stuff.
Nobody trying to topple the world that we've noticed, thank God."

Jay wanted to ask if Michaels had heard from Toni Fiorella--her
quitting had hit the Net Force group hard-but he didn't bring it up.
Toni had called Jay from London and he had heard that she'd called a
couple of other people in Net Force, too, but he still didn't know what
exactly had gone down between her and the boss.  It must have been bad,
though.  Michaels had been pretty miserable about it, even if he tried
to pretend otherwise.

"Nothing interesting at all?"

"Nope.  Well, one little thing.  You know about something called

HAARP?"

"Sure, the atmosphere burner up in Alaska.  The guys in aluminum-foil
hats love that one.  What happen, it melt down?"

"According to one of the scientists working on the thing, somebody
sneaked in and stole something from their computer."

"Who would bother?  The technology is moldy, goes back to Tesia, more
than a hundred years ago."

Michaels shrugged.

"Got me.  I did a little web walking in VR, and it does look as if
somebody got into their computer."

"Kid hacker, maybe," Jay said.

"Could be.  You want to check it out, be my guest."

"Soji is gonna be busy for the next couple days.  I'll take a look at
it, get a jump on work."

"Background and what I saw is in the work file under

"HAARP."

" "Copy, Boss.  See you Monday morning."

"My best to Soji," he said.

Jay went to his office and looked around, but there wasn't much new to
see.  Some hardcopy reports was all.

He had checked his e-mail and phone messages using a virgil he'd
checked out and taken with him, so he was pretty much up to date.

Just for grins, he lit his computer and read over the information on
HAARP the boss had given him, including the hidden cam vid of the
interview with the scientist, Morrison.

Very interesting stuff.  Mind control?  That would be worth stealing,
but that also didn't seem likely.  People had been playing with
low-frequency stuff for a long time without much in the way of results.
Still, it was intriguing.

Jay logged off his computer.  He'd been here for a  E

couple of hours.  Time to head home.  Soji didn't have to be on-line
all the time ... But as he started for the door to leave, his com
chirped, and the sexy, throaty female vox he'd programmed into his
computer said, "Jay!  Priority One com.  Jay!  Heads up!  Answer the
phone, you hunk of burning love!"

Friday, June 10th Longhua, China

When he had been a member of the Chinese Army twenty years before, Jing
Lu Han had apparently at some point collected a Russian Makarov pistol,
and kept it hidden away for two decades afterward.  No one had ever
seen him with it--at least no one alive who could testify to that.
There seemed no other way he could have come by such a thing, there not
having been any Russians in or about Longhua in anybody's memory, and
Jing having lived there all his life, save for his time in the army.

However he came by it, it was with this pistol that Jing proceeded to
shoot seventeen members of his home village in the wee hours of Friday
morning.  He walked calmly through the town, pl inking at anybody who
came out to see what the noise was about, and he did not discriminate
as to sex, age, or familial relationships.  By dawn, he had shot men,
women, children, friends, and relatives.  He had two dozen rounds of
ammunition remaining for the pistol after he shot number seventeen-his
butt-ugly and ignorant cousin Low Tang--but it was moot as to how many
more he might have wounded or killed, given that he was overwhelmed at
that point by half a dozen villagers and hacked to pieces by their
sickles and scythes.  The bloody tatters remaining of Jing were pounded
into the hard ground under their sandals--before the six took their
weapons to each other.

The only apparent survivor of this melee had a shortlived triumph, as
he was murdered shortly thereafter by a middle-aged schoolteacher
wielding a pair of hedge-trimming shears, with which she deftly snipped
his left carotid artery.  He bled out in less than a minute, judging
from the blood trail.

The teacher then used the shears on herself, plunging them into her
belly more than ten times before shock and loss of blood overcame
her.

A block away, four women were killed by a fifth when she drove a
forty-eight-year-old Ford tractor into, and then back and forth over,
the four until the tractor ran out of gasoline an hour later.  She fell
asleep sitting there.

In the town's only decent food market, nineteen people who had fled
there to avoid the carnage were trapped inside when a teenaged girl set
the place on fire.  They were all cooked.  The girl in turn was killed
by an elderly woman who sneaked up behind her and smashed her skull
with a. shovel, and she in turn was slain by a very large naked man who
grabbed and fell on her, suffocating her under his bulk as he lay there
giggling.

In a period of six hours, ninety-seven residents were killed,
twenty-one others were wounded seriously enough so that they would
later die from their injuries, and a hundred more were injured badly
enough that they needed hospitalization.  Nobody knew about this
immediately, because the landline communication wires out of town had
been cut and then burned by a man who used part of the wire to hang
himself.

The town of Longhua had seen better days.

Thursday Quantico, Virginia

Michaels looked up from his laptop and the hardcopy reports,
photographs, and vids, at Jay.

"How did we get this?  It's so detailed."

Jay said, "Some of the pictures and vids are retro-spy sat and computer
augs, some came from the Chinese investigating team, some from a bashed
up and bloody camera found on the scene.  The reports we got from my
friend in the CIA, who got it like the CIA usually gets such
things--they bought it from one of their Chinese computer spies set up
to find such things.  It's all fresh stuff, really fresh."

Michaels looked back at the hardcopy picture of the women who had been
murdered by tractor.  They were mostly mush, and hardly recognizable as
humans.

"What do we know?  And why do we at Net Force need to know it?"

Jay said, "Longhua, China, a mountain town, a hundred and fifty
kilometers or so north and east of Beijing, approaching old Mongolia.
Nothing much happens in Longhua--or at least it didn't use to.

"According to my CIA mole, there's another village, called, ah"--he
looked at the laptop on the table in front of him--"Daru, which is a
couple thousand kilometers south of Longhua, on the coast across from
Formosa.

Same thing happened there a few days ago.  The Chinese, of course, are
sweating buckets trying to keep the lid on, but our sources say it was
another verse of this song.

Group insanity coupled with murderous violence.  Survivors in both
towns tell the same tale.  All of a sudden, everybody went bug fuck and
started attacking everybody else, no reason.  This includes those who
lived to be interviewed.

They were minding their own business and blapf they were enveloped in a
killing rage that overwhelmed them.  None of them can explain it.  It
just suddenly seemed like a good idea to fold, spindle, or mutilate
their family and neighbors to death."

"What do the Chinese investigators think?"

"They don't have a clue.  They've checked for drugs, poison,
psychedelics in the water, diseases, the weather, earthquake activity,
even bad feng shui, and they haven't found anything.  Whatever caused
it came and went, and it didn't leave any traces."

"And what does the CIA think?"

"The CIA doesn't think.  Boss, it just collects data and passes it
along.  I have a standing order with my pal for anything weird, it
comes in as a Priority One Call, which is why we got it."

"I'm sure your friend would be happy to hear you have such a high
opinion of him.  What do you think?"

"Well, what this looks like to me is some kind of deliberate test."

Michaels stared into space.

"And you think it is the Chinese doing it to their own people?"

"Can't say for sure, but why not?  Take out a few, who's gonna miss
'em?  They got more than a billion more where those came from."

"Jay--" "Sorry, bad taste, I apologize."

"But the Chinese investigators seem surprised from these reports.
Wouldn't they know?"

"Left hand not telling the right what it's doing?  Happens all the
time, all over.  State doesn't tell the CIA.  The spooks don't tell the
Army.  We're part of the FBI, and the feebs don't tell us a whole lot
of things.  Why would things be any better in China?  That's assuming
the investigators aren't part of the coverup."

"And why it is our problem.  Jay?  How does this end up floating in our
punch bowl?"

"When you asked me to poke around in that HAARP thing, this came in
almost immediately.  It rang a bell.  You remember the guy you told me
about who came by while I was camping.  The scientist from HAARP?"

"Morrison, right."

"Uh-huh.  Well, he mentioned something about mind control and
low-frequency radio waves."

"He said it wasn't feasible."

"Maybe not.  Or maybe it is.  Maybe the Chinese were the ones poking
around in the HAARP computers and maybe they swiped it.  It just seemed
awfully coincidental, given that this was exactly the kind of thing
somebody would want to do if they could do it."

"The Chinese?"

"Possible.  They have some people who are pretty good hackers.  Maybe
the HAARP guys found some piece of the puzzle and the Chinese knew
where to use it.  Nothing for certain, and it's kind of a stretch, but
I'd check it out."

Michaels nodded.

"I hope you are wrong.  I hope nobody else makes the connection and
thinks it is our problem to solve.  All right.  Find out what you can.
If this thing in China is connected to it, I don't want us to be caught
flat footed  At the very least, we need to be able to say we're
investigating it if somebody should ask."

"Gotcha, Boss.  I'm on the case."

After Jay left, Michaels took several deep breaths.  Let it be some
virus they couldn't find and not something they swiped from a U.S.
computer.  Please.  I really don't need this right now.  Or ever...
Thursday, June 9th Washington, D.C.

It was well after dark when Toni's plane landed at Dulles.

She'd had to switch from the jumbo jet to a smaller craft in New York,
and she knew she'd catch hell if her mother found out she had been at
JFK and hadn't called the Bronx to at least say hello, but she couldn't
deal with that yet.  Her mother would want to know all about it, what
had happened with Alex, and even Guru would need more details than Toni
was ready to provide.  She'd thought the story was over, but maybe it
wasn't, and until she had a better sense of things, she didn't want to
start downloading it into sympathetic ears.  She needed a girlfriend
for that, anyhow, somebody who could listen to the gory details--not
her mother or her elderly teacher.  Mama Fiorella had raised a houseful
of children, mostly sons, and with six kids, she certainly knew about
sex, but knowing it and talking about it were two different things.
Toni remembered a discussion she'd had with one of her older brothers
when she'd been about nineteen.  He'd been asking about women, when
their mother had wandered into the room.  Mama heard the words "female
orgasm" and disappeared faster than Houdini stoked on
methamphetamines.

No, the conversation about Alex and sex and love would have to wait
until she could pay a visit to one of her college buds, Dirisha Mae, or
Mary Louise, women she'd kept in touch with since school.  Women who
had been there and done it themselves, and had come back to cry on her
shoulder about it.  The Man War, they had dubbed it in the dorm when
they'd lived there.  Some battles you won, some you lost, but the war
itself never ended.

The cab ride through the sticky summer night to Alex's was incredibly
fast, as of course it would be, since she was suddenly not in a real
hurry to get there.  Back in London, thousands of miles away, this had
seemed urgent and absolutely necessary.  The closer she got, the less
brilliant the idea seemed.  Just showing up on Alex's doorstep, no
call, no warning?  What if he wasn't home?  What if he didn't want to
talk to her?

What if he wasn't alone^.

That had just come to her for the first time.  What if he had a woman
in his bed and they were giggling and playing games under the sheets?

The grinning, green-eyed monster popped up like magic in her mind and
chortled its nasty laugh.  This jealousy crap was really hard to take.
It wasn't like somebody coming straight at her she could elbow or
throw, it was this sneaky, insidious beast that popped up
unexpectedly,

stabbed her with a long trident when she wasn't expecting it, then ran
like hell before she could gather herself to react.  She hated the
feeling, and she really hated not being able to prevent it.  Toni
wasn't altogether dense about this kind of thing.  You don't spend more
than half your life learning a martial art that would allow you to kick
serious butt without recognizing that you have some... control issues.
She didn't really think Alex would have found somebody else, given his
track record--he hadn't dated anybody to speak of for years after he
and his ex-wife split--but you never knew.  Having jumped back into the
pool finally, maybe he would have found a new partner for synchronized
swimming.  And certainly that would screw things up, wouldn't it?

Toni shook her head at her thought.  Okay, fine.  Whatever.

She wasn't going there for some kind of tearful movie reconciliation,
she was going there for some answers.

Answers that Alex, by God, owed her.

And thinking of there, all of a sudden, here they were.

Alex's condo was on a fairly quiet street in a solid upper-middle-class
neighborhood filled with condos and houses much like his.  Rich people
wouldn't stoop to live here, poor couldn't afford to, but the
residences were comfortable and in keeping with the kind of job Alex
had.

Nice place, nice neighborhood, and until that horrible moment in
London, nice guy.

She had to know what had happened to change that.  It didn't make any
sense.

Toni paid the cabbie, towed her single suitcase on its built-in wheels
to the front door, and stood there.

And stood there.  And stood there some more.

There were lights on inside, and it wasn't that late.  All she had to
do was push the doorbell.

She realized that she was breathing too fast, and that her hands were
damp.  It was a warm, humid night, but that wasn't what was causing her
to sweat.  She was, she realized, afraid.  And coming from a solid base
of being able to protect herself, that was really scary.

She took a deep breath, let half of it out, and gathered her resolve.
She pushed the doorbell.  She heard it ring.

There was a space of time, how long she couldn't say, but subjectively,
about ten or fifteen thousand years.

"Yes?"

His voice over the intercom was the first time she'd heard him speak
since he'd left London seven weeks ago.

It was a sound she hadn't realized how much she had missed until she
heard it, and the simple question stunned her, so that all she could
say was "Hi."

"Toni!?  Don't move, I'll be right there!"

And despite whatever she had felt, it warmed her to hear the joy in his
voice.

Gakona, Alaska

Ventura made the rounds of his surveillance stations.  He was running a
basic six-person team, not counting himself, and that was not really
enough, considering what his client was into, but as much as he was
likely to get away with up here in the middle of nowhere.  Disguised as
a birdwatching club out looking for owls, it gave his people a reason
to be out with binoculars and starlight scopes and cameras, but it was
still something of a stretch to have them wandering around in the
woods.  The locals would surely notice his people, and while they had
all the proper gear and had done enough quick research to fake it, they
wouldn't fool any real birders they might run into.

Fortunately, there wasn't much in the way of law enforcement up here,
so even if somebody thought the birders were a bit odd, they weren't
likely to call the cops, and even if they did, it probably wouldn't be
the top priority for an overextended Alaskan police force.
Weird-looking birdwatchers?  Isn't that redundant?  What are they
doing?  Walking around in the woods looking through their binoculars?
Oh, wow.  How sinister!  What, you think they've come to steal the
trees?  Smuggle Kodiak bears down into the lower forty-eight?  C'mon!

Ventura had installed them at the Two Moose Lodge, a relatively new
fifteen-unit motel a few miles from the HAARP site, a place that looked
like a bunch of log cabin condominiums.  Aside from five ops tromping
around outside where they could watch the comings and goings around the
last room on the west end of the building where Ventura had put the
client, there was an op in the room, a young woman.  Armed with a
short-barreled shotgun, a snub-nosed revolver, and a couple of knives,
Mis-sey White would surely be a big surprise for an unsuspecting
assassin who assumed from her bubble butt and perky breasts, all of
which were barely hidden under a miniskirt and halter top, that she was
a piece of fluff and harmless.  If the locals knew Morrison was
married, they'd likely assume Missey was a girlfriend he'd brought up
here into the woods for fun, where his wife wouldn't be the wiser.

And the wife wasn't apt to drop by unannounced, because a pair of
Ventura'sops were parked in a rented house in Port Townsend on the
Morrisons' street, keeping an eye on Mrs.  Morrison.  You had to assume
that if some114 NET FORCE

body came after the client, they'd probably consider a pass at his wife
worthwhile, and while she wasn't the primary client, it was just good
business to watch her when she and the client were apart.

It hadn't taken the ops--another male and female team--but a few hours
to figure out that Shannon Morrison, nee Shannon Bell, wasn't the
world's most faithful spouse.  Since they'd begun the surveillance on
Monday, Mrs.  Morrison had visited a young and well-built leather
worker one Ray Duncan, and stayed in his shop behind a locked door
three times, for more than an hour each visit.  It was the opinion of
Ventura'sops that judging from the flushed face and big smile when she
left, Mrs.

Morrison was not being custom-fitted for moccasins--unless she was
doing that with both feet in the air while lying on Duncan's couch.

Ventura saw no reason to mention this to his client.

Ray Duncan, twenty-seven, had been a resident of the town for more than
ten years, long before the Morrisons had moved there, and a background
check of the man showed nothing more illegal than a couple of traffic
tickets and a dismissed bust for a single marijuana joint in Seattle
when he'd been eighteen.

Mrs.  Morrison's extramarital activities weren't relevant to protecting
the client.  Yet, anyway.

"Situation?"  Ventura asked.

The man to whom he was speaking looked to be about sixty, gray and
grizzled, wearing a fisherman's vest and floppy-brimmed canvas hat,
overalls, and boots, and a pair of binoculars and a digital cam
dangling from around his neck.  A battered copy of Peterson's Guide to
Birds of North America stuck out of a vest pocket next to a small
flashlight.

The older man laughed.

"Well, let me see.  About thirty minutes ago, something that looked
like a big rat ran behind the garbage bin over there.  Maybe it was a
nutria or a possum--zoology is not my strong suit.  And fifteen minutes
ago, a light went on in the bathroom of unit number five, stayed on for
two minutes, then went out.  What else?  Oh, yeah, a couple of real big
mosquitoes buzzed me.  That's as good as it's gotten."

Ventura gave him a tight professional grin in return.

"You rather be shooting it out with the Mexican drug dealers again?"

"No/but if they were all as exciting as this one, I'd have to start
taking Viagra just to keep my attention up.

This is going to be a cakewalk."

"You said that about the Mexicans at first."

The older man looked at him.

"You expect things to warm?"

"Highly likely, though probably not for a while yet.  I'll keep you
apprised."

Ventura drifted away, a man out for a late night stroll, meandering
toward the next station, a couple hundred yards away.

As he walked, he considered the client and the situation again.  He had
no problems with what the client was doing, that was his business and
not Ventura's, save how it affected the job.  Ventura didn't think much
about morality.

He had his own ethical system, and it didn't match that of most
citizens when it came to what they did, or why they did it.  From his
viewpoint, he was mostly, well... amoral about most things--when you
had killed as many people as he had, the rules just didn't seem to
apply to you in quite the same way as they did to normal people.  He
knew what sociopaths were, and he wasn't one.

He had loved, had hated, had felt the usual emotions.  He had been
engaged once, but she had broken it off because she wasn't ready to
settle down.  He had fathered a child in South America, and though it
had been twenty years ago, he still sent support to the woman and his
daughter, whom he had seen several times secretly, but never officially
met.  There were a couple of people he had deleted that he'd felt sorry
for, and wished he hadn't had to do them.

So he wasn't mentally disturbed or unstable, he had just gotten into a
line of work that involved terminal violence, and had happened to be
very good at it.

Of course, he had been in business long enough to realize that most
governments operated with the same kind of amorality he did in many--if
not most--areas.  Certainly in those areas where public scrutiny wasn't
likely.

He had known federal prosecutors who had let multiple murderers go free
so that they could make a case against major drug dealers.  He had
known intelligence officers who had looked the other way and allowed
whole villages of innocent civilians to be killed because to do
otherwise would have jeopardized some covert operation.  He had known
boy-soldiers who had cranked up their assault rifles and hosed
grandmothers and babies into bloody pulp--for no other reason than
because they had been having a real bad day.  All of these people had
convinced themselves they had been working for a greater good, that the
end justified the means.  That what they had done was, in fact,
moral.

Ventura did not try to fool himself that way.

Protecting a man who had created some kind of mind-control device he
wanted to sell to a foreign power for a lot of money was not much in
the grand cosmic scheme of things.  Ventura wasn't going to get any
piece of the man's action, nor did he want it.  He was hired to do a
job, and he would do that.  Money was not even a way to keep score, it
didn't mean anything, especially if you had enough of it tucked away to
live the rest of your life without ever lifting a finger.  No, it was
the personal challenge, the achievement of goals you set for yourself,
that mattered.  When he was hired to kill somebody, he killed them.
When he was hired to keep somebody alive, he kept them alive. Simple.

Up here in the woods where he could command the lines of fire around
his client, keeping him alive would be fairly easy.  If another
birdwatching group showed up, Ventura wouldn't make any assumptions,
but he certainly would consider them a potential threat.

Outright assassination wasn't likely, not yet, anyway.

No, the worry would be kidnapping, torture, then execution.

And it would be a lot harder to protect the man once they went back to
civilization.

Well.  Worry about that later.  A man with his mind too far into
tomorrow was more likely to get blindsided by somebody today.  You had
to consider the future, of course, but you didn't live there.  Be in
the moment, that was the way of it.

Always.

The second man in the surveillance unit watched Ventura approach him
across the parking lot, lit by the yellow bug lights mounted on tall
wooden posts.  Some of the bugs were apparently too stupid to realize
they couldn't see the yellow light, for dozens of them swarmed the
lamps, flitting around in ragged orbits, banging against the glass that
covered the bulbs.

The op disguised as a birder kept one hand under untucked tails of an
unbuttoned, oversized, short-sleeved shirt until he was sure it was
Ventura heading toward him.

Good.  You never let your guard down when you were working.  Never.

 Thursday, June 9th Washington, D.C.

Michaels could hardly believe it.

"Toni!  I'm glad to see you."

She nodded.

"Can I come in?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, come in, come in."  He reached for her bag.

"I got it," she said.

Inside, there was an awkward silence.

"You want something to drink?  Eat?"  God, she looked great.  It was
all he could do to keep the baboon like grin from taking over his
face.

"We need to talk," she said.

His stomach twisted and churned, but he said, "^ "Why did you lie to
me?"

"I... I..."

"You said you slept with her!"

"Toni--" "She says you didn't!  Which is it, Alex?!"

She was facing him squarely now, and her anger was a tangible thing in
the room.

"Did you have sex with Angela Cooper or not?"

"No," he said, his voice quiet.

"Jesus Christ, Alex!  What is the matter with you?!"

He raised his hands palms up, then dropped them.

"I-It's hard to explain."

"Well, you are gonna explain it, right here and right now He nodded,
and started to tell it.

When he got to the end, she was shaking her head.

"Why didn't you tell me that was what happened?"

He had had a lot of time to think about that, too much time.

"Because I was ashamed."

"You turned down a gorgeous woman who wanted to jump your bones and you
were ashamed?"

"I shouldn't have gone to supper with her, I shouldn't have had the
beer, and I sure as hell shouldn't have gone to her apartment, shucked
my clothes, and let her rub my back."

"All true.  Why did you?"

He'd had time to think about that one, too.

"You and I were having some problems.  I was rattled about the whole
British situation, I wasn't in control of work, of what was going on
with us, there was all that crap about Megan and Susie and that private
eye.  Angela is an attractive, competent woman and she was interested
in me.

I was flattered.  I know none of it excuses what I did, but just so you
know."

"You're an idiot," she said.

"I know.  It never should have come up," he said.

"So to speak," she said.  She gave him a small grin, and a great weight
left him, as if he had suddenly shrugged off a coat made of lead.

"But that's not what I meant.

You're an idiot for not telling me."

"When I saw you in the hotel lobby that morning, I didn't think you
would believe me.  You were certain I had done it, and you didn't want
to talk about it, remember?

You said you didn't want to hear another word."

She frowned, as if trying to remember.

"Did I say that?"

"It doesn't matter.  The truth was, I was lying naked on a table with a
naked woman straddling me and the desire was there."

"But you didn't act on it."

"The thought is as bad as the deed."

She smiled again, shook her head.

"Not on my planet, it isn't.  You felt guilty because in the moment you
thought about it?  You really are an idiot.  If they could hang us for
thinking, we'd all be pushing up daisies.  You can't always control
what you think, only what you do.  You could have saved us both a lot
of grief if you had just told me, Alex, even if / told you not to."

"Yeah, well, I can see that now."

She reached for his hands, took them in hers.

"Come here."

"Yes, ma'am."

And just like that, Michaels's life was very, very good again.

Friday, June 10th Anchorage, Alaska

They were in the airport waiting for the Alaska Airlines flight to SeaT
ac to board when Morrison's new phone cheeped.  He froze for an
instant.  It was them!  He looked at Ventura, then slipped the wireless
headset on and adjusted the straw-microphone.

"Yes?"

A crisp, accentless voice said, "Good morning.  I understand you have a
used car for sale?"

Morrison's neck prickled with gooseflesh and he had a sudden urge to
visit the nearest toilet.  This was the phrase he had told them to use,
and outside of the anonymous note he had posted into a security page
run by the Chinese, nobody had been given the number of this particular
phone, which he'd paid for in cash and registered under a phony name.

He put his thumb over the mike.

"It's the Chinese," he said to Ventura.

Ventura looked at his watch.

"Thirty seconds," he said, pointing at the phone.

"No more.  Follow me."

Morrison nodded and stood.  He moved his thumb from the mike as Ventura
pulled his own com from his pocket and started talking into it
quietly.

"Yes, I have a car for sale."

"I would like to see it," the man said.

"When can we get together?"

"Is your call number blocked?"

"No."

"I'll call you back."

"I'll look forward to it."

Morrison thumbed the discom button on the belt phone.

Ventura said, "My people have scanned the incoming number, we have it.
Go in there and put the phone in the trash."  He pointed at the men's
room.

"Should I turn it off?"

"Leave it on.  They probably already know where you are, but it'll give
them something to look for."

Morrison headed for the bathroom.  Ventura waved, and a pair of
college-aged men dressed in shorts and T-shirts and backpacks went into
the men's room ahead of him.

Ventura stayed out in the corridor.

Making sure nobody was watching him, Morrison shoved the phone into the
bin under the paper towel dispenser.  "Then he went and used the
nearest urinal.

When he exited, Ventura said, "There's a car waiting in front of the
airport for us.  Let's go."

"You think they can get here that fast?"

"They can trace the phone from the carrier sig alone if you don't
bounce it--major national intelligence services have access to some
very sophisticated equipment.  They'll probably send somebody.  It
won't be a trio of long-finger nailed Chinese dressed in colorful
Mandarin silks and sporting Fu Manchu mustaches smiling and bowing and
looking like the incarnation of the Yellow Peril.  More likely it'll be
a busty Norwegian blond nurse helping a little old man with a cane
hobble along--the last people you'd look at and think "Chinese
intelligence."  Certainly they have local agents within a few minutes
of most major cities.  Fortunately, Anchorage isn't that big a town. If
you used a decent re mailer they won't backtrack your email for a
while, though probably they'll get that soon.  I'd expect them to know
who you are within a day or two at most, even if you don't call them
back."

Morrison swallowed dryly.

"The service I used guaranteed confidentiality."

Ventura smiled, looking at that moment like a human shark.

"Sure, if somebody calls them on the phone and asks, they won't say
anything.  But confidentiality goes right out the window when somebody
puts the point of a sharp knife into your re mailer back, over his
kidney, and asks."

"They would do that?"

"Sure.  I would."  He flashed the smile again, and Morrison was in that
moment as afraid of Ventura as he was the Chinese.  Thank God the man
was on his side.

"They'll know you're at the airport, but since the phone isn't in your
name, they don't know who you are, so they'll look for the phone.  When
they find that, they'll look for single men traveling alone.  You're
under a pseudonym, ticketed as part of a group of three passengers,
including two women, so they won't get that immediately.

With enough computing power, they can strain out all the flights
leaving here today, and check on every passenger.

Our phony IDs will hold up under a cursory scan, but if they can dig
deep enough, they'll figure out they are fake eventually, though that
won't really help them except to tell them we were going to Seattle,
and that we weren't on the plane.

"We could probably get to your house in Washington before they get who
you are.  You are dealing with some serious people here, and it's never
been a matter of 'if," but of 'when."

" "My wife--" "--is being watched by my people, and I've just sent more
ops to back them up.  She'll be safe.  And we aren't going there."

"Where are we going?"

"To a place where I can control access for the meeting."

"We're going to drive there?"

"No, we're going to drive to a private airstrip and rent a plane.  We
want to be in the air as soon as we can."

Now that he had been put on alert, Morrison regarded the other people
in the airport hallway with a newfound suspicion.  Those young men with
snowboards, that middle-aged gay couple laughing over a laptop, the
tall man in a gray business suit carrying a briefcase.  Any of them
could be armed and out to collect him.

"Frankly, I don't think they will scramble the A-team to' grab you;
yet," Ventura said, as if reading his mind.

"They know about the tests you did in their country, what the effect
was on their villages, and they know you know about it, but they don't
know for certain that you caused it.  They'll have to check you out.
Once they believe you, that's when we'll have to be extremely
careful."

Morrison's mouth suddenly felt very dry indeed.  He'd known this was
coming, but it hadn't seemed so ... real before.  The pit of his
stomach felt like it did on a roller coaster.  Well.  There was nothing
for it now.  He was committed.

"This isn't quite what I expected," Morrison said.

"It never is," Ventura said.

 Friday, June Portland, Oregon

The boomerang championships were being held in Washington Park, which
Tyrone thought was funny.  They'd driven a couple thousand miles from
Washington, D.C-, to wind up in an Oregon park with the same name.  It
wasn't like any park in his neighborhood, though.  The place was a
giant sprawl that contained a lot of hills, tall evergreen trees, the
Portland Zoo, plus a forestry center and some other stuff.  Up and away
from the zoo parking, they had carved a flat field out of one of the
meadows, big enough for three or four soccer teams to play at the same
time.  The field was covered with what Tyrone thought of as winter
grass, trimmed short, like something you might find on a golf course,
instead of the coarser Saint Augustine grass you found on a lot of
lawns back home.

"What a great venue," Nadine said.

"Yeah."

The contest didn't start officially until tomorrow, and their event
wasn't until Sunday, but there were twenty or so throwers out on the
green practicing.  The warm summer air was full of colorful twirling
'rangs, blues and reds and oranges and greens, bright blurs looping
back and forth.

Tyrone turned to his father.

"Okay?"

His dad looked around, then nodded.

"Looks safe enough.  Mom and I will be back in a couple of hours."

Tyrone nodded back, already thinking about practice.

His dad had rented a car and left the RV parked back at the hotel, a
place called the Greenwood Inn.  His parents wanted to go check out
downtown Portland, but they didn't want to leave Tyrone and Nadine
alone until they had checked out the park.  Given the numbers of
families with small children, the lack of gang colors, or guys throwing
beer bottles at each other.  Dad had decided that Tyrone and Nadine
were probably safe enough here in the middle of the afternoon.

"You have your credit card?"

"Yep."

"You got your phone?"

"Yes, Dad."

"It's on?"

Tyrone rolled his gaze toward the heavens.  He pulled the little phone
from his belt and held it up so his father could see the display.

"Yes, Dad."

What, did they think he was still a baby?  This was Portland, not
Baltimore.  He almost said so, but realized that might not be the
smartest thing, so he kept his mouth shut.  He was learning that
sometimes, that was the best strategy.  If you don't say it, they can't
nail you for it.

Nadine started unpacking her 'rangs.

"Go already, parental units, we're fine here."

His mom smiled.

Once they were gone, Tyrone and Nadine looked for a place to get
started.  There were circles drawn on the grass, but most of these were
already taken.  That didn't matter-they had wash-away chalk; they could
make their own circle.

"Over there," Nadine said.

"Wind is from the south, but it's almost calm, we'll have plenty of
room for hang."

"Hey, scope it.  Isn't that Jerry Prince?"  He pointed.

She looked.

"I think so."

Best MTA guy in the world, the Internationals winner last year, and the
world record holder.  Word was, he threw eight minutes in practice on
slack wind days, and had a witnessed-but-unofficial fourteen-minute
flight.

"Let's watch him.  Maybe we'll learn something."

She laughed.

"You will, for sure.  I got style already."

"You got mouth, is what you got.  I'm gonna be pushing three minutes
here."  He waved his stopwatch at her.

"You're pushing a Dumpster full of horse pucky is what you are pushing.
You are probably gonna trip and fall into it."

He laughed.  She was funny.

There were several events at most boomerang competitions--accuracy,
distance, trick and fast catch, doubling, team throws.  Like Tyrone,
Nadine's event was MTA-maximum time aloft--and the idea was to put a
lightweight boomerang into the air and keep it there for as long as
possible.  There was no problem with judging this one--you put a
stopwatch on them, and the longest time up won.  They had dicked around
with the rules for a while, trying different things in different
competitions-you got two throws but one didn't count, or you got three
and you could pick the best--but now it was different.

You got a practice throw once you were in the circle, but after that,
it was one throw, period.  You had to catch it when it came back, and
you had to be inside the official circle for the catch, or the throw
didn't count.  The record for somebody in Tyrone's age group was just
over three and a half minutes, but unofficially there were guys who had
thrown into freakish wind conditions and kept a bird twirling for a lot
longer.  The longest unofficial time by anybody was more than eighteen
minutes, though that kind of time came out of the professional adult
ranks.  It was hard to even imagine eighteen minutes aloft.

Tyrone himself had placed third in last year's contest with a time of
2:41, using the Moller Indian Ocean, an L-shaped lightweight made of
paxolin--layers of linen and rosin built up and then cut to shape.  The
winner-Nadine, which is how they'd met--had beaten him by seven
seconds, using the same model boomerang as his, so he couldn't blame it
on better equipment.  Some kid from Puerto Rico with a Bailey MTA
Classic had slipped in between his time and Nadine's to bump Tyrone out
of second place, but since it had been his first ever competition, he
had been happy to have third.

Not this year.  This year, he wanted first.  And Nadine was the
defending champion, and he had beaten her--in practice, anyway.  Of
course, if he was gonna do that, he'd have to be better, 'cause they
were gonna use the same 'rang.  The new Takahashi Silk Leaf he'd bought
had added ten or fifteen seconds to their best times, and the blue
beast was the way to go, no question.  And she had beaten him as often
as he had her, so it was not a sure thing.  And on any given day, the
wind could be hinky, the thermals might go weird, and you could get a
great throw or a bad one.  No way to tell until the moment of truth.

Nadine put her pack down and started rolling her shoulders.

You couldn't throw without warming up and stretching, that was a good
way to injure a joint or tear a muscle.

Even if you were real limber, you could strain something, and you
didn't want to do that in general, and certainly not when you were
going to be competing in the Nationals.

"Don't see any Indians or wagon trains," Tyrone observed as he used his
left hand to pull his right elbow up and back over his head.  His
shoulder popped like cracking a knuckle.

"Doesn't look like it's gonna rain, either," Nadine said.

"God, I hope not.  That would be awful."

After a couple minutes, they were loose enough.  The sun was shining,
it was warm, but not too hot, and the wind was mild.  A great day for
flying.

Washington, B.C.

Michaels might have felt better a few times in his life.

His wedding night.  The day his daughter was born.  Even the first time
he and Toni had been together in this very bed, but this had to rank
right up there with the best.  Toni was back, and the two of them were
naked under the sheet.  That went a long way to smooth the turbulent
waters he had been in lately.

"What time is it?"  she asked, sleep still thick in her voice.

"Eight."

"You're late for work."

"I called in sick."

She grinned.

"I have to go pee."

"Go ahead.  I'll make the coffee.  Meet you back here in a few
minutes."

"Urn."

He had already started the coffee, and was able to snatch a couple of
cups and be back in bed before Toni returned from the bathroom.

"That was fast," she said, taking one of the heavy china mugs.  She
inhaled the vapor.

"Mmm."

"So, you want to talk some more about how stupid I am?"

"You'd have to call in sick for a few more days to exhaust that one."

"Okay.  How about, what now?"

"We could take a shower together."  She smiled over the top of the
mug.

"Oh, yeah, I can line up with that.  But I meant something a little
further ahead."

"We could come back to bed after the shower?"

"Uh, Toni..."

"I know, I know.  Let's just let everything else wait, okay?"

He nodded.  He didn't want to push her.  But he also didn't want her to
get up and dress and leave, either.

"Enough talk," she said.

"Actions speak louder than words, remember?"

"Really?  Maybe you better show me.  I kinda don't remember."

She threw her pillow at him.

"You better remember!"

Portland, Oregon

"You think the kids will be all right?"  Howard asked.

"You want me to drive?"  his wife said.

"You know you can't worry and drive at the same time.  This is the
village of the happy nice people, John.  At least compared to where we
live.  They are in a crowd full of people playing with boomerangs, for
God's sake, they'll be fine."

They were driving through a tunnel on Highway 26 that led into downtown
Portland.  The walls of the tunnel were white tile, and they were
pristine.  Not just white--there wasn't any graffiti painted on them.
Clean.

"This is the cleanest town I've ever been in," she said, echoing his
thought.

"No trash, no beer bottles, it's like Disney World."

Somebody honked, just like somebody always seemed to do in a long
tunnel, just to hear the sound it made.  He nodded in the direction of
the honker.

"Yeah, too bad they can't get rid of the morons."

"Stay in the center lane," she said as they exited the tunnel.

It was a pretty city.  There were more buildings than he remembered
from his last visit, and the views of the mountains were not quite as
open.  Mount Hood still had snow on it, even in June, and to the left
Mount Saint Helens did, too.  He'd talked to people who'd lived here
when the volcano blew its top off, back in the spring of 1980, and it
had apparently been quite impressive.

The initial blast had not only blown powdered rock upward, it had
spewed outward, knocking down trees, a "stone wind" that had scoured
everything in its path.  The explosion created ash and snowmelt
pyroclastic flows that had filled lakes and rivers, knocked out
bridges, buried 3

a tourist lodge--empty, fortunately, save for the old man who ran it
and refused to evacuate.  Most of the people who died had been inside
the safety zone established by the state, and it could have been a lot
worse.

According to an old staff sergeant Howard knew who had been in town
when it blew, the volcano had looked like a nuclear blast, great clouds
of pulverized rock boiling into the stratosphere.  The wind hadn't been
blowing toward the city that day, so they'd missed the big ash fall,
though they got some in subsequent eruptions.  It was like living next
door to a concrete plant when that happened, the sarge said, fine
clouds of gray dust swirling in the streets like powdered snow.  Jets
had to detour around the city when the ash was at its heaviest; it
would eat up the engines otherwise, and car air filters clogged and had
to be changed within a few hours.  People wore painters' masks to keep
from choking on the stuff.  It was hard to imagine it.

And you couldn't tell by looking at it now.

"Stay in this lane."

"I heard you the first time.  Who's driving this car, me or you?"

"You're driving.  I'm navigating.  Clearly the more important job."

Howard grinned.  Was there anything more wonderful than a bright woman?
Even if she was shining that brightness into a place you'd rather keep
dark sometimes, that didn't detract from her radiance.

"Yes, ma'am, you are the navigator."

She smiled back, and looked at the car's dash-mounted GPS.  The little
computer screen showed a map.

"Stay on this street--Market--until you get to Front Street, then turn
left.  Immediately get into the right lane,

and turn right on the Hawthorne Bridge.  The restaurant we want is
called Bread and Ink, and it's thirty blocks east of the Willamette
River."

"Begging the navigator's pardon, ma'am, but that's pronounced
"Will-a-mett," not "Will-uh-me."  Accent is on the second syllable."

"Ask me if I care."

"Just trying to keep the navigator honest, ma'am."

Howard's virgil chimed.  He pressed the receive button.

"Yes?"

"Hi, Dad.  This is Tyrone.  Just calling to check in.  We're fine here.
Everybody is fine, no problems, and how are you?"

"Nobody likes a smart-ass, Tyrone."  He shook his head.

"But thanks for calling."

Tyrone put on his airline pilot's voice: "Ah, roger that, parental unit
two-oh-two.  We'll, ah, be standing by here for, ah, your return.
That's a discom."

"He's a good boy," Nadine said when Howard shut off the virgil.

"Yeah, I know.  Too bad he's turned into a teenager."

"You survived it."

"Once.  I don't know if I can do it again."

"I have 'great faith in you.  General Howard.  You are, after all, a
leader of men.  One boy, how hard could it be?"

They both grinned.

 Friday, June 10th Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

A pair of armed guards--heavily armed guards--stepped from a cedar
planked and shingled kiosk and waved the cars to a stop at a big
wood-and-wire gate.  The men were in camouflage clothing, and one of
them kept his assault rifle trained on the ground right next to the car
as the other man approached.  Aside from the rifles, they had sidearms,
big sheath knives, and some kind of grenades strapped on.

They must be burning up in that, Morrison thought.  It was in the high
eighties out here, even in the woods.

"Colonel Ventura," the guard said.  He saluted.

"Good to see you again, sir."

Morrison's roommate of last night, Missey, was at the wheel.  As they
drove through the gate in a ten-foot-tall chain link fence topped with
coils of razor wire, Morrison said, "Colonel Ventura?  What is this
place?"

"The rank is honorary," Ventura said.

"I did some work for the man who runs the place, once.  And let's call
it a... patriot compound."

There was a car in front of them with Ventura's operatives, and one
behind them, special vehicles rented at a place Morrison didn't think
was going to run Hertz out of business.  The guy who provided the cars
had been covered in what looked like Maori tattoos, including his face,
and the deal had been done in cash.

The drive from there had turned into a ride in the country, about
forty-five minutes' worth to this place.

Morrison put two and two together: Idaho, men with guns in paramilitary
gear, razor wire.

"Some kind of militia group," he said.

"Neo Nazis or white supremacists?"

"Let's just say if you were black, it would be a lot harder to call in
the favor."

"Jesus."

"These people speak very highly of him, yes, but I doubt he spends much
time here."

Morrison shook his head.

"Then again, it is unlikely in the extreme that anybody will sneak in
here and kidnap you," Ventura said.

"Certainly not anybody of the Oriental persuasion."

"I thought you said the Chinese wouldn't send somebody who looked
Chinese."

They passed another trio of armed men in jungle camo sitting on or
standing next to a military vehicle, a Hummer or Humvee or whatever.
The three silently watched the cars go past, and when Morrison looked
back, he saw one of the men hold up a com and speak into it.

"That's only if they want to sneak up on you.  The Chinese don't like
to delegate certain functions--they don't trust each other, much less
round-eyes.  If you arrange a meeting with them for something they
want, they'll send someone who looks and acts the part.  They won't
want you to doubt their sincerity."

The narrow dirt road curved through another thick patch of woods, then
into a cleared space maybe three or four acres big, with several prefab
metal and wooden buildings centered in the clearing, all painted a drab
olive green.  A big air-conditioner rumbled in the background, spewing
vapor into the hot afternoon.

There were more military-style vehicles, more armed men--as well as
several armed women--and a pair of flags flying from a tall wooden pole
in front of the largest of the structures.  There was Old Glory, and
under it, a shining white flag with what looked like a pair of crossed
yellow lightning bolts over a line drawing of a hand.

"Sons of Pure Man," Ventura said, watching Morrison as he looked at the
flags.

"Empowered by God Almighty to smite the wicked, scourge the impure, and
kick the asses of anybody else who would mongrelize the true race."

"These people are friends of yours?"  Morrison said.

"These people will help me keep the wily Chinese from grabbing you,
draining you dry, and then smiling politely as they hand your widow
your head with an apple stuffed into its mouth, on a platter.  We
aren't family here, but allies are where you find them--sometimes you
have to overlook a few little cultural or philosophical differences."

Morrison sighed, but didn't say anything else.  Ventura had a point. He
was about to go into negotiations with people who had been wise in the
ways of political and court intrigue for five thousand years. Being
ruthless was not a problem for a culture with as much practice at it as
they had.  And he had hired Ventura for his expertise.  As long as he
did the job, Morrison didn't care how.

"So now you put in a call to your friend the used car buyer and invite
him to drop round for a little chat.  He won't like it, but he'll come,
especially if he's figured out who you are, and that you might indeed
have something worth selling."

"And after that?"

"Well, once they know you are where they can't get to you, then we can
leave.  Further communication can be relayed through here--the general
has quite an up-to-date collection of electronics--and with any luck,
we can keep them believing you are still here until the deal is
done."

"And after the deal is done--if it is?"

"One step at a time.  Dr.  Morrison.  We'll burn that bridge when we
have to burn it.  Oh, and by the way, after we step out of the car?
Assume that everything we say is being monitored--because it probably
is.  They can't hear us in here because we're protected by certain
devices, but outside, you can book it that somebody will have a shotgun
mike or even a laser reader on us at all times."

"

"Allies," you said?"

"Trust no one and no one can betray you.  Just good tactics is all. Ah.
 There's the general, come to welcome us."

Jackson "Bull" Smith was no more a general than Ventura was a colonel,
save to the bunch of mouth breathers who hut-hut-hut ted around his
compound in the Idaho woods.

Thirty years ago.  Smith had been an Army infantryman, done some
fighting in the Middle East, and more ground-pounding in one of the
never-ending eastern European wars, but he'd never gotten past master
sergeant, and that only when he got tapped to serve in the unit
quartermasters, where he spent his last two tours.  Still, he knew the
Army way as well as any decent NCO, had seen legitimate action--he had
a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star-and he was very canny.  It was true
you couldn't run an army without sergeants, and Smith knew the ropes
well enough to organize a bunch of half-assed warrior-wannabes into a
fair imitation of soldierly discipline.  At the very least, they were
good robbers, because that was chiefly how they raised their operating
funds.  So far, they had knocked over supermarkets, banks, a theater
multiplex, an armored car, and a small Indian casino, all without being
caught or losing a man, and without killing too many bystanders.

Venture knew their M.O."  and he'd sort of halfway kept track.  Smith's
boys had stolen somewhere in the range of six to seven million dollars
in the last year alone, Ventura guessed.

You could buy a lot of Idaho backwoods and MREs for seven million
dollars.

As Smith stepped forward to shake his hand, Ventura nodded crisply at
the man, a choppy, military bow.

"General."

"Please, Luther, it's "Bull."

" Ventura suppressed a smile.  Yeah, he thought it was bull, too.

"I don't want to break discipline in front of the men."

"Understood," Smith said.

Ventura didn't know how much of the pure race crap Smith really
believed, if any.  The money and power were probably a lot more
attractive, since Smith's history, military and otherwise, didn't show
any particular contention with or hatred of any of the "mongrel" races
until lately, but--you never knew.  Pushing sixty, ole Bull here had
been at this militia game for about ten years.  He was living high on
the hog, considering the location.  Good food, good booze, women, toys,
and the admiration and obedience of a couple hundred men, give or take.
There were a lot worse ways to spend your time if you were an old
ex-sergeant with no other skills.

Five years ago, when Venture had still been in the assassination
business.  Smith had contacted him the usual roundabout way, and they
had struck a deal.  A certain influential politician in the Idaho
statehouse--if that wasn't an oxymoron--had been standing in the way of
Smith's acquisition of this very compound, something to do with land
use, or butting up against state forestry property or some such.  The
politician, a state senator, knew what Bull and the boys were up to,
and there was too much of that going on in Idaho already, the state was
getting a real bad reputation.  Tourists didn't want to come and see
the boys playing war games--at least, not the kind of tourists the
state wanted.  It was bad for business if little junior went out
picking berries and got mowed down by a bunch of gun-happy paramilitary
goons who mistook him for an enemy, or Bambi, as had happened at least
once.

If he couldn't stop it legally, there were some shadier ways to get
things done, and the senator knew how to do them.  This, of course,
played right into Bull's conspiracy fantasies.

So.  The politician died in what the coroner said was an accident, and
Smith got the property he wanted.  And Bull was not a man to forget
somebody who'd done him a service.

"General, I'd like to introduce Professor Morrison.  The doctor here is
doing some secret work for the Navy and Air Force, and naturally we
don't trust them to keep him safe for our mission."

"Understood," Smith said.  He offered his hand to Morrison, who took
it.

"There are traitors everywhere."

"Sad, but true," Ventura said.

"I'll have my adjutant show your people where to bivouac, and you and
the professor can join me for dinner."

"Excellent idea.  General," Ventura said.

When Smith was a few yards ahead of them, Morrison said, "How are you
going to explain a Chinese agent coming here' to see me?"

"What, a turncoat chink double-agent?  We're feeding false information
to our gook enemies.  Doctor, you know that.  The general understands
how espionage works.  He keeps his ears open."  Ventura tapped his own
ear, and hoped that the man would remember what he'd said about being
watched and listened to.

Morrison remembered.

"Ah.  Yes, I see you're right.  A man in the general's position would
know these things."

"Of course.  Hell of a soldier.  Bull Smith, and a credit to the Race."
He turned slightly so that Morrison's head would block any camera that
might see his face, and gave the man a quick wink.

He also reached around and adjusted the paddle holster in his
waistband.  The general's people were probably fairly loyal, not
counting the undercover federal ops that must have infiltrated by now;
still.  Condition Orange applied here, just as it did everywhere else.
If need be, he could pull the Coonan from concealment and get off two
shots in about a second.  Not a patch on John Wesley Hardin out of a
hip-slung rig, maybe, but still pretty damned fast from under a vest.
And until they got inside with Smith, his people would have his back
covered.

So far, so good.  Pretty soon, though, it was going to get a lot more
interesting.

 Saturday, June 11th Washington, D.C.

The voice was female, sexy, throaty, and designed so that everything it
said seemed like an urgent request to go to bed with it: "Alex?  We
have a Priority One Corn.  Alex?

We have a Priority One Corn.  Alex--?"

"All right, I heard you already!  Computer answer page off, please."

Next to him, voice thick with sleep, Toni said, "I thought you were
going to change that voice."

"I haven't been able to figure out a way around Jay's program."

"And you're supposed to be the head of Net Force."

"Yeah, well.  Jay is the best programmer in Net Force, now isn't he?"
To the computer, Michaels said, "Answer com, visual off."

"Hey, Boss."

Speak of the devil.

"What, Jay?"

"Sorry to bother you at home this early, but you said I should let you
know if I got something on this, uh, Chinese business.  Well, I think
you might want to see this."

Michaels looked at the clock.  Too early.

"All right.  You want to download it here?"

"Probably not the best idea.  Boss.  It needs telling."

Michaels sighed.

"I'll be at the office in an hour."

When Jay was off the com, Michaels turned to Toni.

"Another crisis."

"I remember them."

"Why don't you come with me?"

"I quit, remember?"

"Your job is waiting for you--I haven't hired anybody to replace
you."

"Let's hold off on that.  I still need to sort all this out."

He smiled.

"I thought we had done that."  He waved at their mutual lack of clothes
under the sheet.

"No, we resolved the personal issue.  I'm still working on the business
stuff."

"Come along as a visitor, then."

"No, you go ahead.  I think I'm going to sleep in."

"Be here when I get back?"

"Maybe."

They both grinned.

Quantico, Virginia

Michaels leaned back.

"Okay, you got me down here.

Speak."

Jay said, "Well, I can tell you the theory.  Still doesn't prove that
it works."

"I left a warm bed to come hear this.  Jay.  I take your point.  Go."

"All right.  Background stuff: Generally speaking, the human brain
operates over a fairly small bioelectrical frequency range, and while
there is some overlap, these are usually divided into four parts:

"The mental state Beta, sometimes called 'beta waves," is from 13 to 30
Hz.  This is the so-called 'normal' level of awareness.  At the top
end, at around 30 Hz or a bit higher, you have states of
agitation--anger, fear, stress, etc.--but most conscious human thinking
is done in this range.

"Below Beta is the Alpha state, from 8 to 13 Hz, and this is normally
associated with a relaxed, mellow state of mind, kind of daydreamy, but
with an increased ability to concentrate.  This frequency is easily
achieved by such things as meditation or self-hypnosis.  For more than
forty years there have been devices--biofeedback, or 'brain wave
synthesizers'--that help produce Alpha, and you can pick up one in any
large electronic or new age store.

Some people supposedly can do it just by rolling their eyes back in
their sockets."

Michaels nodded.  He'd read about this stuff somewhere along the way.
It sounded vaguely familiar.

"I'm still awake."

Jay continued: "Beneath Alpha is Theta, at 4 to 7 Hz, and this is
generally a state of very deep concentration, such as advanced
meditation or devoted prayer, and it includes intense waking memories,
and lucid dreaming.

"Under Theta, we have Delta waves, from 0.5 to 7 Hz, and these
frequencies were once thought to occur only in deep sleep.  Certain
people, however, such as Indian yogi adepts or Tibetan priests, have
been able to produce Delta states on demand, and while appearing to be
asleep, fully participate in and recall conversations later when they
are jawake."

"There are some variations, and some people run higher or lower, but
that's pretty much the basic model."

"All right," Michaels said.

"So now I know about brain frequencies."

Jay nodded.

"Over the years, various agencies of various governments have tried
broadcasting certain extremely low-frequency radio waves in an effort
to alter human consciousness.  In the fifties, the Russians had
something called Lida, a machine that supposedly rendered people
susceptible to hypnosis.  The North Koreans had variations of this
during the Korean War, used on American POWs.  They didn't work very
well, but that was not for want of trying.

"For years, back in the old Soviet Union, the Russians beamed
microwaves at the American Embassy in Moscow, centered on the
ambassador's office.  The CIA discovered this in 1962, and some effects
on various ambassadors were speculated upon, including a leukemia-like
illness, and a couple of deaths from cancer.  Nothing proven.

"In 1976, ham radio operators around the world noticed a peculiar
signal originating in the Soviet Union that came to be known as the
"Russian Woodpecker," from the staccato way it interfered with their
radios.  This signal was thought to come from big Tesia transmitters,
and was thought by the CIA to be designed to depress or irritate the
recipient."

"Tesia?  Like the Tesia coil?"

Jay grinned.

"Let me tell you about Nikola Tesla.  There are some who believe the
Tunguska Event--an explosion estimated in the 10-to-15-megaton range
that blew down half a million acres of pine forest in Siberia in
1908-was either a test--or a malfunction--of one of Tesla's giant
transmitters."

"I thought it was a comet," Michaels said.

"You probably think Oswald shot JFK, too.  Boss.

Merely a cover story, according to the conspiracy theorists.

Some say it was an alien spaceship, others a runaway black hole, others
a speck of antimatter, but, hey, my money is on Tesla.  He was a
certified genius.  Aside from being the guy who came up with and
patented the idea of alternating current, thus helping George
Westinghouse to become filthy rich, he created working fluorescent
lights long before Edison's uncredited lab monkey made the less
efficient incandescent bulb.  Tesla patented all kinds of stuff.  His
work was the basis for the X-ray machine.  He sued Marconi--and
won--for swiping his work to create radio.  Tesla came up the ideas
that would later become radar and tomography.

"Listen, in 1904, in Colorado Springs, he built a big power generator
for his wireless power transmission experiments.

Using what he called "terrestrial stationary waves," he lit two hundred
lightbulbs twenty-five miles away by pumping juice into the ground, no
wires.  He could generate artificial lightning bolts of a couple to
three hundred thousand watts that were more than a hundred and
thirty-five feet long; you could hear the thunder fifteen miles away in
town.  He was waaay ahead of his time, so he certainly had the smarts
and gear to knock down a few trees.  It would have been the last in a
long line of tests that--some say--included sinking the French ship
lena by electrical bolts generated miles away."

"Apparently Tesia didn't much care for the French," Alex said,
smiling.

"He didn't care much for anybody," Jay said.

"Anyway, in 1906, J. P. Morgan financed Tesia, and he built a bigger
generator than the one in Colorado, this was on Long Island.  Eighteen
stories tall, topped with a huge metal globe that weighed more than
fifty-five tons.  Eventually he and Morgan had a falling out, and he
made a couple of bad choices, so he ran out of money before he proved
it could work.  According to his theory, you could focus the power just
right, and turn it into what would essentially be a death ray with the
power of a small nuke, and send it anywhere on the planet by bouncing
it off the ionosphere."

"Fascinating, Jay.  Are we getting to the point any time today?"

"There's a great story about Tesia going to a bridge with a hammer and
a stopwatch, tapping the metal at precise intervals, and damn near
taking the bridge down with the Galloping Gertie effect.  I'm telling
you, Tesia was head and shoulders above everybody else of his time."

"Jay.  Hello.  Earth to Jay?"

"It's the same technology.  Boss, pumping juice into the air without
wires!  The HAARP people aren't doing anything Tesia didn't think of a
hundred years ago."

"All right, I'm impressed.  He was a genius.  Get to the point."

"Well, according to my mole in the CIA--and that's for the benefit of
any CIA ops listening to our conversation, good luck on finding
him--even after the demise of the evil empire, the Russians continued
their experiments with ELF radiation, using devices that Tesia would
have recognized as his own.  Ivan hasn't found the magic combination
yet, that we know of.  Aside from HAARP, which is the biggest, there
are other 'atmospheric heaters' like it all over the world, at least a
dozen, not counting any somebody might be hiding in the woods
somewhere.  And using the ionosphere to bounce off of--like playing
pool, you can bank the shot--any one of them could be driving the
Chinese bonkers--if they've figured out the correct frequency to do it.
And given what we know, it seems as if somebody might have figured it
out."

"Sounds like science fiction to me."

"No, that is the point.  Boss--it's old tech, the root stuff.  Anybody
with some wire and a lot of time on his hands can produce it.  It's the
frequency stuff they need, not the hardware.  It's like plug-'n'-play;
you don't need to be a whiz to get it to work.  Tesia did the basics a
century ago.  Certainly a theory we ought to check out."

"And how do you propose we check it out?"

"Hey, that's the fun part.  We go into the wonderful world of VR and
hunt it down on the net.  I bet that somewhere, sometime, somebody has
put something about this into the ether, and even if they hid it, I'll
find it."

Michaels nodded.  Mind control.  A scary thought.

"What about Morrison?  Are we checking him out?"

"Oh, yeah.  I'm paying his files a visit this afternoon.

I'll get anything anybody knows about Dr.  Morrison or my name's not
Lightnin' Jay Gridley."

Michaels just shook his head again.

 Saturday, June 11th Portland, Oregon

John Howard watched his son watch the boomerang throwers.  The contest
was going full steam, several events at once, and the air was full of
bright plastic bits spinning in all kinds of flight patterns.  Outside
of computers, this was the first thing that had ever seemed to really
attract Tyrone.  Well, not counting that little girl who had broken the
boy's heart a few months back.  What was her name?

Belladonna?  It had to happen eventually, of course, and maybe sooner
was better than later, but it had been a wrenching experience.  And
your first heartbreak never went away, not altogether.  Howard could
remember his own with a clarity he wouldn't have thought possible more
than twenty-five years after it had happened.  He'd even told Tyrone
about it, trying to ease his son's heart

sickness.  Maybe it had helped.  He liked to think that it had, a
little.

Ah, yes, beautiful Lizbeth Toland, who had betrayed him at sixteen with
his best friend, costing him both of them.  It was a lifetime ago, and
in the grand scheme of life, it didn't mean much, a tiny bump in the
road, but not something that ever quite went away.  Even after all the
years, he could still summon up the sadness he'd felt, though it had
lost the painful sting it had once had.

Ah, well, it was the path not taken, and he didn't have any regrets
about the one he had gone down instead.  If he'd wound up with Lizbeth,
then he'd never have met Nadine, never fathered Tyrone, and he would
have missed entirely the life he enjoyed.  It was possible that other
life could have been better, but he couldn't see how.  He wouldn't
trade Nadine and their son for all the money, fame, and power in the
world.

He smiled at Tyrone and his new girlfriend, and their enthusiasm for
this whirly-twirly sport.  Fortunately, Little Nadine didn't seem to be
evoking the same sexual response in Tyrone that Bella had; they were
more like pals, and Howard was happy to see that.  Plenty of time to
play that game later.

After a career in the service, first the military, then taking over the
military arm of Net Force, finally rising even in this bastard service
to general, he now felt a need to spend more time with his family.

It seemed like yesterday that he'd gotten married, a few hours ago that
Tyrone had been born, and here he was already a teenager.  It would be
but a blink of an eye before the boy was off to college, getting
married himself, maybe having children.  One day, Howard would look
down, and there would be this little version of Tyrone standing
knee-high to him, saying "Grampa!  Grampa!"

It made a man stop and consider his life, such thoughts.

"Where did you go?"  his wife said.

"I was just thinking about my grandson."

"Oh, really?  Something you haven't told me, John?"

"No, no, I meant Tyrone's son."

"Lord, he's only thirteen.  Let's give him a few more years before we
start asking for grandchildren!"

He put his arm around her.

"Okay.  Two years.  Granny."

She leaned her head against his chest.

"Nobody is ever going to call me "Granny," not in this life, no way, no
how."

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

It sure hadn't taken long, Morrison reflected.  He'd made the call
yesterday, and less than a day later, here was a black limo carrying a
Chinese agent pulling to a stop in the hot Idaho afternoon ten feet
away from him.  He swallowed, his mouth dry.

Standing a few feet away, Ventura had changed into a green T-shirt,
blue jeans, and cowboy boots, and he made no effort to cover the pistol
bolstered just behind his right hip.  He had his thumbs hooked into his
front pockets, and looked like a good old boy with nothing to do
standing in the sunshine.  Morrison couldn't see Ventura's eyes behind
the man's sunglasses, but he was more than a little certain his
bodyguard was watching the limo with deadly expertise.  This had been a
good idea, hiring Ventura.  He felt a lot better knowing somebody like
him was on the job.

Behind them, twenty feet back at parade rest, stood General Smith,
flanked by a pair of his men holding assault rifles across their
chests.

The limo's door opened, and a small, balding, round-faced Chinese man
wearing a white silk summer suit and soft, gray, leather Italian shoes
alighted.  He smiled at Morrison and bowed slightly.

"Dr.  Morrison, I presume?"

Morrison nodded slightly and offered a nervous smile in return.

"I am Qian Ho Wu, but my friends call me "Chilly."

Nice to meet you."  From his voice, the man could have been born and
raised in Kansas--there was no trace of a Chinese accent.

Chilly Wu?  Hardly a name to conjure up visions of water torture, was
it?  He seemed perfectly harmless.

"Mr.  Wu.  This is my associate, Mr.--" "--Ventura, isn't it?  Also a
pleasure to meet you, sir."

Wu extended his hand, as if to shake Ventura's hand.

Ventura gave him a broad smile, but kept his hand down.

Wu smiled in return, and it seemed as if something had passed between
him and Ventura, though Morrison couldn't tell what it had been.

"Well.  Gentlemen.  Where can we talk?"

"Why don't we take you on a tour of the facility," Ventura said.  It
was not a question.

"A ride around to see the sights."

"Certainly."  He held his hand out toward the limo.

"We have a car," Ventura said.  He nodded toward one of the special
rental units.

Ventura had told Morrison about this before.  Inside the car.  Smith
couldn't eavesdrop on the conversation.

"Of course," Wu said.

"Somewhere shady my driver can park and wait?"

"Over there under the trees by the garage would be good."

Wu leaned back into the car and reeled off a fast bit of singsong
Chinese.

The driver responded in the same language.

Ventura said, "Sure, there's a toilet in the garage."

Wu turned back, one eyebrow raised.

"Ah.  You speak Mandarin?"

"Not really.  A few words I picked up in a restaurant ordering
dinner."

Wu flashed a careful smile, turned back to the driver, and spoke again,
and it sounded different to Morrison, though it still seemed to be
Chinese.

Again the driver responded.

"That's okay," Ventura said, "as long as he doesn't wander far from the
car, he can smoke and stretch his legs.  I'll have one of my people
keep an eye on him to make sure nobody bothers him."

"I see you have a few words of Cantonese, too.  You must really enjoy
Chinese food.  Though wouldn't it have been a better tactic to pretend
ignorance?  Perhaps learn something useful?"

Ventura shrugged.

"You weren't going to say anything useful anyway, were you, Mr.  Wu?"

"Call me "Chilly," Luther.  It's always nice to be working with
professionals.  Makes things so much cleaner, don't you think?"

Still wearing his old birdwatcher costume, Walker drove, Ventura rode
shotgun, and Wu and Morrison sat in the backseat of the full-sized
Dodge Intrepid.  Walker wore headphones plugged into a DVD player with
loud music blaring from the phones into his ears, making him
effectively deaf.  The phones were a precaution.  Even though Ventura
had worked with him long enough to know Walker could keep his mouth
shut, what you didn't know, you couldn't be forced to say.

Ventura had taken his pistol from its holster and laid it on the seat
where the men in back couldn't see it.  He kept his hand on the weapon.
Wu didn't look it on the surface, but he was a dangerous man--Ventura
had been around enough of them to know one when he saw one.  Something
in the eyes, something in the body language.  Wu played it down--the
silk suit and expensive shoes--and he wasn't carrying a gun big enough
to show, but underestimating an opponent was always a mistake.  With
Wu, it could be fatal in a hurry.  It was still early in the
negotiations, and probably there wasn't any real threat yet, but
"probably" wasn't something you risked your neck on.

"So, what exactly are we looking at buying.  Dr.  Morrison?

Would it be too forward if I call you Patrick?"

Wu was showing off a little, dropping names just to let them know he'd
done his homework and that he knew who he was dealing with.  They would
have squeezed the computer remailing service to get Morrison's ID, no
big deal, but knowing Ventura was on the case was a little more
impressive.  That meant they were working this one hard.  Well they
should be, too.

"A very useful vehicle design," Morrison said.

"That's it?  Just the design?  No hardware?  No wheels, motor, no
chassis?"

"Any electrical engineering student could build you the hardware, Mr.
Wu.  Only I can show you how to make it work."

"I see.  And how much are you asking for this... design?"

"Four hundred million dollars."

Wu chuckled.

"A hell of a used car."

"Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back."

"Uh-huh.  And what proof do we have that you can deliver?"

Morrison smiled.

"Proof?  Next time you're in the old country, take a trip to visit the
villages of Daru and Longhua and ask the survivors there how things
have been lately."

Wu glanced at Ventura, then back at Morrison.

"Are you sure you want Luther here to hear the details?"

"I have no secrets from Mr.  Ventura."

Wu nodded.

"Very well.  Anybody with good intel connections, such as Luther has,
could have gotten those two names.  How do we know you aren't running a
scam?"

"What would it take to convince you?"

"Well, you could give us the technology, allow us to test it, and then
let us pay you."

Morrison laughed, and after a moment Wu joined him.

"Just a thought," Wu said.

"Try a different thought."

Wu rubbed at his chin and pretended to do that.  Ventura picked up his
pistol and lightly pushed the muzzle against the back of his seat,
pointed at Wu.  If the man made any sudden moves, the Chinese were
going to need themselves another purchasing agent--and at the least,
the rental company was going to have to put in new seat covers.

"All right, then.  Try this: Let's take it for a little test spin,
shall we?  Kick a few tires, rev the engine, drive around the block.
This time, we pick the destination.  If it works there as it did in Dam
and Longhua, then we would be very interested in your vehicle."

"At my price?"

"It seems reasonable--assuming nobody else will be driving the same
model anytime soon?"

"They won't be."

"How, ah, big is this car?  How many, ah, passengers are we talking
about?"

"There is a point of diminishing returns.  With more power, I could do
more, but the limit right now is a circle about ten miles across."

Wu nodded.

"I think we've strained the car metaphor as far as we can.  I need to
get back to my superiors with your offer.  We will come up with
coordinates for a test.

We'll get these to you, you run it, and if it works, then we'll discuss
terms.  Is this satisfactory?"

"Yes."

"Good.  Shall we head back?"

Ventura nodded, and tapped Walker on the shoulder.

Walked looked, and Ventura pointed his finger at the car's roof, waved
it in a tight circle, then pointed behind them.

Walker nodded, and pulled into a dusty field next to the gravel road to
turn around.

As they headed back toward the HQ compound, Wu said, "Fascinating place
here, Luther.  You a believer?"

"No.  Parallel traveler.  You make do with what you have."

"I hear that.  We have similar places in our country, you know.  Now
and then the government uncovers a nest of malcontents and has to step
on it.  If you don't, pretty soon you have fools who are willing to
walk barehanded in front of tanks.  Better to crush them before they
get too brave.  The difference is that you know these people are here,
and yet you allow them anyway."

"The price of freedom," Venture said.

"I've always thought that freedom was a highly overrated commodity," Wu
said.

"More trouble than it is worth.  Order is much better.  Besides, it
doesn't really matter to people like us--you and me--does it?"

Ventura shrugged.

"Everybody has to be someplace.

One is as good as another."

"I suppose."  Within the tiny shrug of indifference, there was a flash
of something on Wu's face, something cold and ugly, just a fast hint,
and Ventura had to fight the urge to pull the trigger and cook the
little man right here and right now.

No, he didn't look like much, but Ventura had a feeling deep in his gut
that Chilly Wu here would be a formidable opponent in any kind of a
fight.  With any luck, he wouldn't have to find out.  If he did, it was
going to end in blood, he was sure.  He hoped it wouldn't be his own.

 Vermillion River, Lafayette, Louisiana

Jay had to smile at the imagery the boss enjoyed.  He had a thing for
the swamps--a couple of times Jay had gone with Michaels's default
scenarios and they had been boats on bayous, like that.  They weren't
bad, better than a lot of off-the-shelf stuff, but not as textured as
Jay normally liked to create.  He'd added in some pretty neat stuff for
this setting, at least he thought so, even if Michaels might not
notice.  Of course, the boss was management, and VR programming wasn't
his real strength.

As he motored along the narrow river in the little outboard-rigged
flat-bottomed skiff, or whatever they called them down in Cajun
country.  Jay decided to stay with this sequence.  He had a lot of work
to do--places to go, things to look for--and it was easier to use this
than to create a new ersatz, so he cruised past the Spanish moss and
the alligator and right on up to the Dewdrop Inn.

That name was worth another smile.

Carrying a small satchel, Jay approached the front door.

There was a raggy, bearded ye haw kinda guy in nothing but overalls
leaning against the door, and Jay walked right up to him, smiling.
Yehaw, so the joke went, was the kinda guy whose father might also be
his brother or his uncle.

"Ain't open," the man said.

"I know.  I just wanted to let you know that somebody is around back
trying to break in."

It took a second or three for it to register--probably because Yehaw
had some kind of dinosaur-like sub-brain down in his nether regions
that had to relay the thought back and forth a few times before he got
it.

Yehaw frowned, pushed off the wall, and lumbered away, heading for the
back door.

Jay waited until he was out of sight, then slipped the lock on the
front door with a thin piece of steel, stepped inside, and relocked the
door behind him.

The door guard--in reality a fire wall program for the HAARP computer
system to stop outside access--was strong, but not very bright.  The
guard would amble around back, not see anybody trying to break in, then
return to his post in the front.  He'd remember that Jay had
approached, if anybody asked, but since Jay wouldn't be visible, the
guard wouldn't worry about him.  He'd never think to look inside; that
would be beyond his capabilities.

That was the problem with software.  Hardware, too.

People didn't upgrade for all kinds of different reasons, and it always
cost them something.  Shoot, the military arm of Net Force still
had--and still used--some sub- gigabyte-RAM tactical computers when
there were systems with ten or fifteen times that much power you could
buy off a department store shelf!  Might as well be steam-powered.  The
honchos-military would mumble, and say that was all they needed to run
their tried-and-true programs;

they were dependable, and shockproof, why bother going for more power
with some untested unit or software that might crap out when they
really couldn't afford that?

Shortsighted of them.  Jay thought, but then he wasn't interested in
being anywhere except on the cutting edge.  A lot of people still
thought slow and steady won the race, when fast and steady was much
better.

Well, that was not his problem at the moment.

Jay found the lockbox under the bar that the boss's report had
mentioned.  He removed a pair of latex gloves from his satchel, slipped
them on, and bent to examine the box.  He saw the scratches showing
that the padlock had been tampered with.  Humming to himself.  Jay
removed a small aerosol container from the satchel, aimed it at the
lock, then sprayed it with a fine mist of dry powder.

He blew the excess dust off, then used a second aerosol can on the
lock, this one a kind of liquid glue.

Yeah, okay, so he brought maybe a little more attention to detail to
his constructs than was necessary.  A man had to have some standards.

Several fingerprints appeared as the chemical reaction from the two
sprays took place.  Jay pulled a clear strip of transfer tape from a
roll in his handy satchel, carefully pressed it against the lock,
peeled it off, and stuck it onto a white plastic card.

Just for fun, he took his pick gun and a torsion tool and opened the
padlock.  Took all of about six seconds, a piece of cake.

The lockbox had stacks of papers, money, some coins-all virtual
representations of various kinds of electronic files.  Jay picked up a
couple of papers and scanned them, but he wasn't as interested in what
they had to say as he was in who had broken in before him.  He closed
the box, relocked the padlock, and headed for the back door.

He would take the prints back to the office and check them.  Of course,
what he would really be doing was backtracking e-codes and running down
servers and all, looking to see who had left traces of their visit.  If
the thief had been stupid enough to do it barehanded.  Jay would have
him.  Probably he hadn't been that stupid, but you never knew.
Generally speaking, if crooks were smart enough so they wouldn't get
caught, they were smart enough to make more money honestly than they
could by thievery.  Not always.  Some were smart, but lazy.  Some liked
the adrenaline rush of doing something illegal.  Jay remembered one
case where the head of a large computer software corporation got his
thrills hacking into private computer systems and copying crap, like
employee addresses or financial records, stuff he could have legally
gotten elsewhere.  He didn't even use the material, just stashed it in
a booty file.  The thief never did any damage, and never took anything
of value--it was the electronic equivalent of petty shoplifting, and if
he'd wanted, he could have bought most of the companies he plundered.

When Jay had run him down, the corporate prez had laughed, paid the
fine, and was probably back at it the next day.  A thrill junkie.

Jay ran into guys like that all the time, hackers who thought they were
faster or smarter or better, and who wanted to test themselves.  He
could understand that--if he hadn't gotten into Net Force, he'd
probably be doing it himself.  But now it was his job to nail 'em.

Jay had gone up against the best/ and while he hadn't always beaten
them easily or fast, in the end, he had beaten them.  Well.  At least
the ones he knew about.  There might be crooks out there who were so
good they could commit the perfect crime, that being one that nobody
ever realized had happened.  But truth be told.  Jay didn't believe
there were many, if any, who were that good.  And he didn't think
whoever had broken into HAARP's computer was one of the best, or they
wouldn't have left scratches on the lock.  This would be a walk in the
park.

Now he had to go and find out about Dr.  Morrison.  If anything, that
ought to be even easier.

Saturday Portland, Oregon

Tyrone and Nadine had spent the morning watching contestants in the
various events, concentrating on checking out the MTA seniors.  Nobody
was coming close to Gorski's unbelievable record, but there were some
pretty good hang times.

They decided to practice after lunch, and went to the field set up for
that, a little farther up the hill.

Tyrone looked at the sunny meadow with others practicing, then at
Nadine.  She wasn't a looker like Bella, but in this light, here in
this green field, she was a lot more attractive in ways that Bella was
not.  She was a person, somebody who liked being with him, somebody who
he liked being with for reasons that went past a pretty face.

"What are you grinning at, fool?  Your chances of beating me
tomorrow?"

Tyrone shook his head.

"Nothing," he said.

"Well, come on, let me give you another lesson in how to throw."

"Your ass."

"Yeah, you are my ass, aren't you?"

They both grinned.  At that moment, Tyrone didn't see how life could
get much better than this.  Well.  Maybe after he won the championship
it could.

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

"Have you ever fired a handgun.  Dr.  Morrison?"

They were on one of several shooting ranges at the militia compound.
Though it was late, nearly nine, it was still light enough to see the
targets, squared-off human torso silhouettes made of cardboard, mounted
on wooden stands.  There were a dozen of these at various distances
from where they stood behind a chalk line drawn on the dirt, next to a
beat-up table made of weathered two-by-fours and plywood.

Morrison shook his head.

"No.  Rifles and shotguns when I was a boy, not pistols.  My parents
didn't believe in them."

Ventura said, "The principle is the same.  You use a sighting device to
line the weapon up on the target, press the trigger, the gun goes bang.
The main differences are that a shorter barrel is harder to aim well,
and most hand 5

guns have considerably less punch than a rifle or a shotgun.

You trade stopping power for portability and being able to conceal the
weapon."

Ventura pointed to the tabletop, where several pistols lay.

"What we are going to do is let you try several of these, to see which
one you can shoot the best.  There isn't time for you to gain real
expertise, and this is for a last-ditch, enemy-in-your-face situation.
If you have to resort to it, then my people and I will likely be dead,
and frankly, your chances of surviving will be slim and none.

But they probably won't expect you to be armed at all, so you might
surprise them."

Morrison nodded again, feeling a cold rush in his lower belly.  He
hadn't thought this far ahead.  The idea of being kidnapped or killed
had been more intellectual than real.

Looking at a table full of guns made it all too real.

"Ideally, you would carry the biggest handgun you could--the larger and
faster the bullet, the more rounds, the better.  That's a Glock .40
semiauto, the black plastic one.  Next to it, that's a Taurus .357
revolver.  These two have the most oomph.  If you hit somebody solidly
in the torso with one round of either, they'll go down and be out of
the fight better than nine times out of ten."

Ventura shook his head.

"I have to apologize.  Doctor.

This isn't how you'd learn to shoot if I had time to teach you
properly, but we don't have time.  We'll start with those."

Morrison put on the headphones Ventura handed him.

"The hearing protectors are electronic," Ventura said.

"You'll be able to hear fine until the gun goes off, but they'll cut
out the noise.  These two pistols are particularly loud devices.  If
you shoot one inside a car without protection, you can blow out an
eardrum.

"Hold it like so, both hands.  Stand like this, arms out, in an
isoceles triangle.  Grip is important, hold it tight.  The sight
picture should look like this."  Ventura drew a picture on the table
with a felt-tipped pen.

"Line the post up inside the notch, put the target right on top.  If
you need to shoot, you probably won't have time for a clean sight
picture, your attacker will be right in your face, so what you'll do
instead is point it like you would your finger, and index the whole
gun.  Here."

He handed Morrison the black plastic pistol.

"If you can see the back of the gun against the man's chest, that's
good enough for close range."

"How close?"

"Inside twenty feet.  In your case, probably more like six or eight
feet."

"Okay."

"Glock operates like this.  Magazine in here, pull back the slide like
this to chamber a round, pull the trigger.  No external safety.  Point,
press.  Don't jerk it.  Try it, that target right in front of us. Shoot
it twice.  It will kick some."

The cardboard human torso and head was maybe a dozen feet away.

Morrison took a deep breath, pointed the Glock at the target, and
pulled the trigger.  The damned gun almost jumped out of his hands, and
the second shot went off before he was ready, so it was probably a
little high ... He lowered the weapon and looked.

There were no holes in the target.

How could he have missed?  It was right in front of him!

"First round was off to the right, second was way high and right.  Try
the Taurus."

Five minutes later, Morrison felt a sense of profound embarrassment. He
had fired ten shots from five guns.

Only two of the bullets had hit the cardboard, both of them almost off
the target to the right, barely on the edge.

Two.

"Don't feel bad," Ventura said.

"Trained cops miss at this range.  Ever see the video of the state cops
who stopped a couple of guys in a truck for an expired license?

Guys were guilty of other crimes, so they came out with guns.  The
truck passenger and one cop faced each other from twelve feet, each
fired five or six times, nobody hit anything.  If somebody is pointing
a gun at you, it's a lot worse than shooting at a target that won't
shoot back.

Adrenaline makes your hand muscles twitch funny."

Morrison shook his head.

"Try this one.  Smith and Wesson Model 317, an Air-light."

He handed the gun to Morrison.

"It's not very heavy."

"Aluminum, mostly.  Just under ten ounces.  Holds eight rounds of .22
caliber."

Morrison took another deep breath, indexed the little gun, pulled the
trigger, one, two} The revolver jumped a little, but not much, and when
he looked at the target, there were two small holes in the center, no
more than an inch or two apart.  Hey!

"Again.  This time, keep pulling the trigger until the gun stops
shooting."

Morrison obeyed.

This time, he was able to see the holes as they appeared in the
cardboard.  They weren't very big, but all of them were clustered in
the center, except for one, and it was only a few inches above the
others.  The clicking of the hammer on empty came as a surprise.

"Very good.  This is your weapon," Ventura said.

"It's light, simple to operate, almost no recoil.  It doesn't have any
real stopping power, but a solid hit from a small-caliber round is a
lot better than a miss from a hand cannon."

Morrison looked at the gun.

"Here is how to reload it, though I don't expect you'll get that far if
you need it.  If it's one guy, point and shoot until he falls down or
goes away.  If it's more than one, give them two rounds each, then
repeat.  We'll practice that, double-taps."

But they didn't get to double-tap practice.  The sound of Morrison's
cell phone ringing was clearly audible through the electronic sound
suppressors.

That would be the Chinese calling.

Morrison removed the earphones and thumbed the receive button on the
phone.

"Hello," he said.

"Hey, Pat!  What say we take that car of yours for a test drive?  I
know just the place."

As Morrison listened to Wu, Ventura reloaded the Air-light, then handed
it to him.  With a cell phone in one hand and a gun in the other, it
suddenly seemed to Morrison that the summer evening's warmth had just
turned to winter.

 Sunday, June 12th In the air over Northern Idaho

The helicopter pilot pointed.

"Plinck Field!"  he yelled over the copter's racket.

Ventura nodded.  They were two thousand feet up and easing in for the
landing.  He looked at his watch.  Though it wasn't that far, the hop
to the private airfield via chopper had taken forty-five minutes; part
of that was for a couple of changes of direction, just in case.  And it
was farther away from Smith's compound than the commercial airport at
Coeur d'Alene.  Ventura had arranged for the helicopter before they'd
arrived, knowing they'd need it once the game was fully engaged. Inside
the militia's base, they'd be safe, but once they left, the odds
shifted.

Even Morrison understood this, once it had been pointed out to him.

"But why a helicopter?"  he'd asked.

"Because they know you're leaving.  They also know where you are
going--unless you can conduct your test by remote control, you have to
go back to Alaska to play the tune on your HAARP.  I've got people in
place there, and anybody who shows up for hunting or birdwatching is
going to be considered armed and dangerous.  But if I were the Chinese
and interested in grabbing you, I'd give it a try here, first.  There
is only one road leading to this place, and a couple of half-wits in
camo with binoculars can cover it.  Half my people will convoy out in
two of the rental cars an hour before the copter arrives, heading for
the airport at Coeur d'Alene.  That'll give them something to look at
if they are out there.  They'll probably expect some kind of
subterfuge, so the third car will leave fifteen minutes after the first
two, going the other way.

Probably this will draw any fire teams that might have been set up.
Forty-five minutes later, we take off.  They won't be able to follow us
in the air without us seeing them, and I don't think they'll expect
that anyhow.  Even if they manage to footprint us with one of their
spy-sats, we won't stay in range long, so they'll lose us while we're
still heading the wrong way.  If they have that much going for them,
they'll probably figure out we're going to a private airfield, but by
the time they can figure out which strip and get people there, we'll be
gone.  We have a chartered plane waiting for us when the copter touches
down."

"What if they've anticipated this and already have people at the
private airfield?"

Ventura grinned.  The man was beginning to catch on.

"If they're that smart, then I'll just have to shoot them."

He digested that for a moment.

"This must be costing a fortune."

"Not even a drop in your bucket, if you pull it off.

Besides, I haven't even run out of your retainer yet."

Morrison hadn't spoken to that, but Ventura could see the man was
scared.  Well he should be, dealing with these kinds of players.  But
at this level of the game, if Morrison got deleted, it was likely that
Ventura would be crossing that bridge with him, and he wasn't quite
ready to do that yet.  He only had to keep the Chinese hopping long
enough for the deal to get done.  Once the money was transferred and
the information was in hand, Morrison would have to disappear, go into
hiding permanently, though he didn't know that yet.  With enough money,
you could vanish completely and live out your life in comfort and
security, provided you knew how.  Ventura knew the drill and he would
advise Morrison, but that wasn't in his own future.

Morrison was probably rationalizing that the Chinese would figure he
wasn't going to be telling anybody he'd sold them American secrets, and
that once the deal was done, he was no threat.  He was only partially
right.  The Chinese would have the software, but in order to make it
work, they'd need the hardware, and that wasn't something you could
hide under a tarp.  If the intelligence service of any major country
suddenly had citizens run amok, killing one another, it would be cause
for no small concern.  If they could figure out the cause, finding the
smoking gun would be relatively easy, big as the gun would have to be,
and a couple of Stealth bombers could clean that clock nicely and be
home in time to see the results on CNN.

The helicopter landed on the pad, the rotor wash kicking up fierce
wind. Ventura slapped Morrison on the shoulder.

"Stay behind me."

They alighted from the craft, and Ventura pulled his cocked-and-locked
pistol and held it down along the side of his leg.  He moved quickly
toward an ancient DC-3 parked a hundred yards away.  As they moved, the
elderly gooney bird cranked its port engine, a chuff of white exhaust
smoke erupting from the engine.

Ventura smiled.  He had fondness for these old planes;

he had flown in them all over the world.  The DC-3, sometimes called
the Dakota, had been around since the mid-thirties.  They were noisy,
slow, and wouldn't go all that far without refueling, but they were as
dependable as sunshine in Hawaii.  Ventura, whose piloting skills were
emergency-level-only, had always thought that if he ever got around to
buying a plane, this was the one he'd get.

No bells, no whistles, but it would get you and your cargo there.  It
was still the best prop plane in the air, for his money.

The plane's door opened, the little ramp lowering, and Hack Spalding
stood there, grinning his gap-toothed grin.

He gave Ventura the finger, which meant things were okay onboard.
Ventura turned to motion Morrison up the short ramp while he watched
their backs.  Nobody around.

Well, good.  Score another one for the round-eyes ... Washington,

D.C.

The Mall was hot and muggy even this late in the afternoon, no real
surprise this time of year, but Toni didn't really care.  It was good
to be outside moving, good to be back in the U.S."  and especially good
to be walking next to Alex.  It was almost as if the last couple of
months had been a bad dream.  As if she had just awakened from a
troubled sleep, the memory of it fresh but somehow unreal.

He wanted her to come back to her job, and the truth was, she wanted
to, but that had been a big part of the problem, working for Alex, and
she didn't see how it was going to improve.  He couldn't treat her like
an employee in the same way he had before they'd become lovers.  It
made a difference, and there were all kinds of problems that came from
that.  He had skipped sending her into a danger zone when she'd come up
in the rotation, and while she wanted him to be concerned for her as a
man for his woman, she did not want the same concern from a boss to an
employee.

She'd have to do some kind of work, though, and the truth was, she'd
already been offered several jobs.  A couple of computer companies had
approached her to head up their security services, and they'd offered a
lot more money than she'd been making at Net Force.  There were some
nice perks, too: cars, condos, a snazzy title.  And she had seriously
considered taking one of these.  Mostly, she could work from anywhere,
though there would be some travel for secure-situation setups.  But
while she didn't want to work for Alex, she also didn't want to get so
far away she couldn't see him.

There was the possibility of a transfer.  Alex had never put her
resignation into the system.  She'd quit, but he hadn't told anybody
higher up.  She was officially on personal leave, not drawing a salary,
but still considered employed.

Net Force was more or less freestanding as an operation, but it was
still technically part of the FBI.

There were people on the other side of the fence at Quantico who would
be pleased to have her working in their offices--she had heard from a
couple of them, too.  Thing was, while that meant she'd be in the same
general vicinity as Alex, it also meant she'd be viewed as something of
a traitor in Net Force.  Just as the CIA and the FBI always had a de
facto competition going, and there was little love lost between them.
Net Force ops tended to think of regular feebs as dweebs--to be
tolerated, but avoided as much as possible.

Alex probably wouldn't like it very much if she jumped into the Bureau
mainline.

Then again, it wasn't really his choice, was it?  She had to do
something to earn her living, and she was already in the system--a
transfer to another building would be the easiest thing all around, at
least insofar as keeping her apartment, getting to work, and not having
to learn new systems.  And she could still see Alex for lunch or
workouts in the gym every day.

Her phone's attention-beck came on--an odd little piece of music that
came from a movie more than fifty years old, a comedy about a
super-secret agent named Hint.  The little tune was the same as the
ring of the special phone belonging to a fictional U.S. security
agency, reserved for incoming calls from the President of the United
States: Dah dah dah, dan dan dah, dan DAH, dah dah dah, dah dah daaah.
This little sting was courtesy of Jay Gridley, of course, who loved
such esoterica, and who also loved to program personal hardware when
the owner wasn't looking.

She looked at the screen but the caller's ID was blocked.  If she'd
been carrying a virgil, it wouldn't have been.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Toni.  How are you?"

Some bored god must be reading her mind and taking an interest in her
life: It was Melissa Allison herself.  Director of the FBI.  On a
Sunday, no less.

"Fine, and you?"

"Surviving.  Listen, I understand you are interested in transferring
from Net Force into Mainline, is that correct?"

The director, who had gotten her job by knowing where a soccer
stadium's worth of political bodies were buried, was not one to mince
words.

Indeed, Toni had been considering it only seconds before, but she
hadn't made the decision yet.  That's not what the director wanted to
hear.  She wanted a yes or no answer.  Here's the spot, Toni, and like
it or not, you 'we just been put on it.  Choose.

Toni glanced at Alex, who was busy watching a young couple with two
small children trying to corral the little critters.  The boy, about
three, was running around in circles, singing a clock song--"One
o'clock, bang, bang, bang Two o'clock, bang, bang, bang!"  The little
girl, maybe a year and half, was running away from her mother at full
speed across the lawn in that lurching toddle small children had,
laughing as she went.  Alex was smiling at the show.

"Toni?"

Toni pulled her attention back to the phone.

"Yes, ma'am, I have been considering it."

"Wise," the director said, and Toni knew from that one word that the
woman knew about her and Alex.

"I have an opening in my schedule tomorrow around one.  Come and see me
and we'll discuss it."

"Yes, ma'am."

With that, the director was gone.  Toni hooked the phone back into the
belt of her jeans.

Alex turned away from the children and looked at her, lifting his
eyebrows in question: Who was that?

Maybe it was selfish of her, but Toni didn't want to kill the rest of
the afternoon.  If she told Alex it was the director, she'd have to
explain the rest, he'd want to talk about it, and she just wasn't up to
that.  She'd only been back with Alex for a couple of days, it didn't
feel as secure as once it had, and if he knew she was thinking about
going over to the feeb shop, she was sure he would be upset.  He might
not say anything, he would cover up his feelings--he was good at that,
covering up his feelings--and she just wasn't ready to go down that
road.

She slipped her hand around his arm.

"Nothing important," she said.

"Come on, I want to see the Smith's new Ancient Wheels exhibit."

He smiled at her.

"Sure."

All right.  It wasn't a lie, if maybe not strictly true, but if
anything came of it, she would tell him.  Why bring it up and ruin the
mood now, since it might not amount to anything anyhow?  A conversation
with the director was all it was.

As they passed the young parents and children, Alex grinned at the
little girl, who had finally gotten tired and plopped upon the neatly
clipped grass, where she sat quietly cooing.

"Ever think about having children?"  Alex said.

Toni was caught flat footed  She stopped, as if she had forgotten how
to walk.  She stared at him.  Children?  With Alex?  Of course she had
thought about it.  Dreamed about it, even.  But before she could gather
herself enough to say anything, he shrugged.

"Just an idle thought," he said.

 Sunday, June 12th Gakona, Alaska

No Chinese assassins materialized to try and intercept them as they
drove from the old pipeline airstrip just north of Paxon toward Gakona.
Ventura said it wasn't likely, and he had ten of his people checking
possible ambush sites along the route, plus cars in front and behind of
theirs.  The older man.  Walker, drove again, with Morrison in the
front and Ventura sitting in the back.

"If anybody shows up, they'll probably think I'm you, since the V.I.P
usually rides in the back," Ventura had explained.

"You think they'll be here?"

"Oh, they are here, somewhere.  I'm not sure they'll try for you yet;
they may be waiting for the test, to be certain you can do as you say
before they get really serious."

"You think once we're inside the facility we'll be safe?"

"No.  I have a roster of the guards, and if any new faces show up,
we'll deal with that, but that fence and a few half-trained guys on
patrol won't stop somebody really determined to get inside.  I'll have
my people watching the roads and the air, so if they show up in force
we'll know about it in time to haul ass.  I've worked out a few escape
routes from the facility."

Again, Morrison was surprised at the man's thoroughness.

Everything he did seemed thought out to the last detail.

The trip was uneventful, however--if you didn't count a small elk herd
crossing the road--and within an hour they were inside the auxiliary
trailer, warming up the system.

As Morrison worked, Ventura prowled around like some kind of big
cat--alert, watching, listening.

"About ready," Morrison said.  He picked up a dogeared phonebook-sized
tome of locations by latitude and longitude and thumbed through it
until he found the ones he wanted.  There it was... 45 degrees, 28
minutes, 24 seconds North; 122 degrees, 38 minutes, 39 seconds West...
Not the center of the city, but it would take in all of of downtown on
both sides of the river... Ventura nodded.

"Okay."

"It'll have to run for a couple of hours to get the optimal effect. Not
as long as it did in China, since the target is closer, and we lose
less energy for the beam."

"Fine."

He looked at the control.  Flip the cover up, push the button, and it
was done.  He could go eat or take a nap while it worked.

"I feel kind of, I don't know, awkward about this."

"Why?"

"Well, the target being in the United States and all."

"A pang of nationalism?"

"Maybe a little.  I somehow didn't think it was going to go like
this."

"That's always the way.

"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy."  You know why
it's a deal breaker if you don't do this, don't you?"

"No.  why?"

"Because if this works, and if as a result of it a few dozen people
die, then you haven't just killed some faceless people nobody cares
about a million miles away, you're a multiple-murderer in your own
country.  And the city you were given as a target?  It is in a state
with the death penalty, did you know that?"

Morrison felt the taste of bile threaten to rise in his throat.

"No.  I didn't think about that."

Ventura shrugged.

"You can only ride the needle once--that's how they do it there,
strapped to a gurney by lethal injection.  What the Chinese want is
more assurance you won't change your mind and go running to the
authorities once the deal is done.  Once this deal is complete, they
don't have to find you and kill you--all they have to do is tell the
feds who you are, sit back, and let them do the work.  The Chinese
wouldn't want a trial, of course, having all this come out, but neither
do you.  And once you get arrested?  Well, then they'd know exactly
where to find you.  It's very difficult to stop an assassin who is
willing to die to get the job done."

Morrison felt the ugly truth of this flood into him like liquid oxygen,
chilling him to his core.

"I--I see."

"Not quite yet, you don't.  Before you push that button, let me lay out
a few more things you have to know.

"Once you get your money, Patrick Morrison has to disappear.  You have
to vanish so completely that the best agents in China and maybe the
United States and half a dozen other countries can't find you, because
eventually they all might be looking.  If you had visions of yourself
being on the board of directors of some university and benevolently
awarding grants to starving scientists or some such, you might as well
erase those ideas now.  The only way you are going to survive to spend
that money is to become somebody completely different from the man you
are.  You will have to sever all links to your past-and unless your
wife is willing to go along for the ride, which'll get a little bumpy
up front--that will include giving up contact with her, too.  You'll be
a new man, in a new country, with a made-up background and history.

You won't even be able to read the same magazines you used to read, or
practice any of your hobbies, because you can bank on it, somebody will
try to track you from something as innocuous as those, and probably be
able to do it.  Say you subscribe to a small scholarly journal that
thirty or forty thousand people get.  You better read somebody else's
copy, because while it might take years to physically look at everybody
on the subscription list, the Chinese are nothing if not patient.  You
only have to make one mistake.  Doctor, and you lose the game.  Patrick
Morrison will have to die figuratively, or he will surely die
literally."

Morrison stared at him.  He hadn't thought it through to this end.  But
as he heard Ventura speak, he knew what the man said was so.  For a
moment, it took his breath away.  How could he have been so
shortsighted?

"That's how it will have to be if you want to survive.

I can help you do it, point you in the right direction, tell you the
steps you have to take, but once you're set, I can't have any more
contact with you, either.  They might want to convince me to tell them,
and better for you if I don't know your new name and face."

"I didn't even think about the risk to you," Morrison admitted.

"Don't worry about it.  I've had people looking for me for a long time,
and I've managed to stay alive against the best.  I came into this with
my eyes open, and I've been living on borrowed time for years.  But
this is what you are facing.  So the question you have to ask yourself
is.  Does four hundred million dollars justify you becoming an entirely
new man?  With that kind of money, there are places in the world where
you can live like a king, have luxury, sex, the power of life and
death--as long as you don't stick your head up too high and get
noticed.

There are men who have done this before, men of wealth and power who
had to go away for whatever reason, and they survived twenty, thirty,
fifty years, some of them.

Some of the ones who are very careful are likely still out there.  The
careless are for sure dead."

Morrison stared at the button, and a realization solidified in his
belly like a lump of cold steel.  He said, "It's already too late to
turn back, isn't it?"

Ventura gave him a thin smile.

"Truth?  Yes."

Morrison took a deep breath.

"Fuck it, then."

He reached out and pushed the button.

PART TWO

All Problems Are Personal

 Sunday, June 12th Washington, D.C.

At home.  Jay came out of VR, took a deep breath, and removed his
headset and gloves.  It had been a milk run, a visit to a library, and
no matter how skilled you were in creating scenarios, sooner or later,
reading a pile of material came down to reading a pile of material.

He had all he could find on Dr.  Patrick Morrison, and while he had
skimmed it as it was being copied, he hadn't begun to take it all in.
From what he'd gleaned so far, the guy was legit enough.  Degrees, work
experience, marriages, the usual living-life stuff.  No trouble with
the law, no beefs at work, pretty much Mr.  Dull and Boring right down
the line.

The only blot on an otherwise white-bread career was at the job he'd
had before going to work for HAARP.

He'd been doing some kind of behavioral modification experiments on
chimps, working with extremely low frequency radiation, a post-doc
research project at Johns Hopkins, and it had apparently petered out.
He failed to get the results for which he had been looking.  His grant,
as the report mildly and politely put it, had not been renewed, and
he'd been out of a job.

A small red flag went up in Jay's mind, but when he thought about it,
it wasn't that big a deal.  Yeah, the guy was into ELF stuff, but
that's what a lot of HAARP was about.  If you were looking for a
plumber, you didn't hire a cabdriver, now did you?

"All work and no play make Jay a dull boy," Soji said.

He smiled up at her.  She stood there in a bathrobe.

"Look who's talking.  You've been so deep into the web I haven't been
able to see anything but your back for days."

"Want to see something else?"  She undid the bathrobe and held it
open.

"Oh, mama} Come here!"

Before she could move, however, the phone played the opening strains of
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

Unfortunately, his phone was programmed so it played that particular
tune only if the call was IDed as coming from Net Force HQ or Alex
Michaels's virgil.

"Shit," he said.

Soji closed her robe and belted it shut.

"He who hesitates stays horny," she said.

"Hey, Boss," Jay said.

"Better get to the office.  Jay," Michaels said.

"There's been another case of collective madness."

"In China?"

"No," Michaels said.  His voice was grim.

"Closer than that."

Sunday, June 12th Portland, Oregon

John Howard watched as his son came up to make his throw.  The boy
stopped, rubbed his fingers back and forth, and allowed some glittery
dust to fall to check wind direction.

He held a stopwatch in one hand and his boomerang in the other.  The
judges waved Tyrone into the circle.

Howard felt more tense than he'd thought he would.  It was a^big deal
to Tyrone, of course, but it was just a game, after all.  No reason to
be digging his fingernails into his palms.

Off to one side and behind Tyrone, Little Nadine stood, waiting for her
turn to compete.  She was three contestants behind Tyrone, so she'd
know what time she had to beat.

So far, the times hadn't been very good, according to Tyrone, and both
kids had done better in practice.

The judge nearest the circle held up his hand in a halt sign, then
called another judge over for some kind of consultation.

"Come on, come on!"  Howard said.

"Let the boy throw before his arm gets cold!"

Next to him, his wife said, "Asshole."

He looked at her.

"You talkin' to me?"

"Not particularly, I was referring to the judge, but if the shoe fits
..."

That pissed him off.  What was she on the rag about now?  He hadn't
done anything.  He glared at her.  She glared right back.

Tyrone stood there for another few seconds, then walked to where the
judges were.  Howard couldn't hear what his boy had to say, but
apparently the judges really didn't like it.

The head judge reached out and slapped Tyrone upside the head.

"Fuck!"  Howard yelled.

"You see that?  He hit our son!"

Even as he spoke, Howard ran toward Tyrone and the judges.

The second judge must have figured the slap was rude, because he hauled
off and punched the head judge square in the mouth, knocking the man
down.  Certainly this was justice, but that irritated Howard even
more.

"Leave him!"  Howard yelled as he ran.

"That bastard is mine Tyrone stepped in and delivered a solid kick to
the fallen judge's ribs.  It sounded like somebody dropping a
watermelon, thoowock!

Even as he drew near to the trio, Howard was aware of noises coming up
the hill: horns honked, metal crashed into metal.  He slid to a stop as
the second judge spun to face him.

"Get off the circle!"  the man screamed.

"You can't be here!"

"Oh, yeah?"  Howard said.

"Hey, pal, I'm already here!

What are you gonna do about it?"

Tyrone gave the fallen judge another kick.  Not as good as the first
one; it had a natter sound.  Weak, son, weak.

The second judge threw a haymaker at Howard, who ducked it, came up,
launched a fast left hook to the face, then a right cross to the chin,
bap-bap!  That straightened the sucker out like popping a shoe shine
cloth.  The guy sailed backward and to the ground.  Get off that,
asshole!

The judge Tyrone was kicking got to his feet and lurched at the boy,
but before Howard could get there,

both Nadines arrived.  His wife kneed the guy in the crotch as Little
Nadine latched onto his arm and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

Irritated, Howard moved toward them.  This was his business to take
care of, he didn't need the goddamned women getting in the goddamned
way--!

A car came across the field, lights on and horn honking, a big,
powder-blue Cadillac.  It plowed into a group of five men who stood
there giving the driver the finger.  The men flew like dolls in all
directions as the driver gunned the engine.

Not real smart to shoot the bird at a man coming at you in a car at
speed.

"Eat shit and die!"  the driver screamed.  Then he started to laugh.

Four or five other people attacked the Caddy, slamming their fists and
feet at it.  The driver spun a donut in the grass, still cackling
madly.

Something wrong here, Howard thought.  He shook his head, then looked
at the man he had just decked.  What was he doing^ He looked down the
hill and saw a dozen people fighting.

One of them was a policeman.  The cop pulled his gun, and a quick
succession of shots--poppoppoppoppop!--echoed up the hill.  Gunshot
victims fell, and added more screams to the din.

Dazed, Howard looked up the hill.  There were people there, too, but
they weren't fighting; they were watching, staring in surprise.

Howard's thoughts were fogged with rage, but something was trying to
make its way through the anger: This was a bad place.  Down the hill it
was worse, but up the hill, it was better.  Therefore ... "Come on!" he
yelled to his family.

"We have to get up the hill!"

"Fuck off!"  Tyrone yelled back.

Little Nadine released her hold on the judge, who was screaming in
pain.  She stared at Howard.

"What is going on?"  she said, her voice high and frightened.

"I don't know.  Gas, maybe.  We've got to get out of here.  Help me."

His wife kneed the judge in the nuts again.  The man gurgled in agony.
Howard grabbed her, pulled her off.

"Leave me alone!  He hit my son!"

Howard jerked her backward.

"Tyrone!"

The boy turned, and the mask of primal rage on his face slipped a
little.  He raised his eyebrows.

"Dad?"

"Up the hill, son, up the hill.  Go, go!"

Tyrone nodded.  Little Nadine grabbed his hand and they started
running.

Howard had to pin Nadine's arms to her side and he half carried, half
dragged her away from the meadow.  She kicked and screamed at him for a
hundred meters before she stopped.  She was a lot stronger than he'd
realized.

Finally, when they were two hundred meters away, Nadine came back.

"J-John?  What--?"

"I don't know, hon.  But whatever it is, the farther away we get, the
better.  Come on."

They caught up to the children, and the four of them kept moving.
Howard looked back as they ran.  The Cadillac was lying on its side,
and a mob had the driver out and on the ground, kicking him.  He was a
dead man.

More gunshots echoed from farther below.  Horns honked.

Cars crashed.  People screamed in voices full of incoherent fury.  This
beautiful park, what the locals like to call God's country, had gone
mad.

It was the Devil's land, now.

Howard reached for his virgil.  Who to call?  The local cops were down
there shooting people.  They needed help, and they needed it bad.

Sunday, June 12th Quantico, Virginia

Toni had come with him this time, and he was glad to have her here.
Along with Toni was Jay Gridley.  It was seven p.m. on a Sunday, but
they wouldn't be going home tonight.

"All right, here is what we have so far," Michaels said.

"It's still kind of sketchy.  Late this afternoon, people inside what
appears to be a rough circle ten miles across and centered in the
Westmorland area of Portland, Oregon, went nuts.  So far, there are
sixty-seven confirmed deaths--murders, self-defense, traffic and freak
accidents.

There have been hundreds of people hurt bad enough to require
hospitalization, and thousands more lesser injuries.

Whatever caused it seems to have stopped, but the city is in chaos. The
numbers of dead and injured keep climbing."

"Lord, Lord.  How is General Howard?"  Jay asked.

Howard had been the one who'd called it in.  He'd gotten hold of the
National Guard, then Michaels.

"He and his family are fine.  They were apparently right at the outmost
edge of the phenomenon's effect.  A couple hundred meters closer in,
and they'd have been in a lot more trouble.  What have you got for
me?"

Jay said, "If we assume this is coming from some very powerful
broadcast station, then it's a matter of figuring out which one, and
who is running it.  I played a hunch and put in a call to HAARP, talked
to a guard there.  They are supposedly on hiatus, except for some
calibration tests."

"That's what Morrison told me," Michaels said.

"Well, Morrison is up there right now running one of these tests.  And
guess what--according to the guard's logs, he was running other
'calibrations' on the same days those two villages in China went
bonkers."

"Jesus."

"Yeah.  Awful coincidental, ain't it?"

"Toni?  What do you think?"

"I think maybe you ought pick up this Dr.  Morrison for a serious
chat."

Michaels nodded.

"I'll get a federal warrant and some marshals on the way."

"You don't want to toss this one over the fence to the mainline feebs?"
Jay said.

"Not yet," Michaels said.

"This looks like our mess.

We should clean it up on our own if we can."

Maybe Morrison wasn't involved with this, but given the situation in
Portland, they couldn't afford to take the chance.  The next incident
might happen anywhere--New York, Chicago, even Washington, D.C. While
the thought of senators and congressmen beating each other to bloody
pulps sounded fine as a joke punch line, the reality of it was
different.

Getting a warrant would be easy enough, and there were probably federal
marshals somewhere in Alaska who could serve it.  And while he was at
it, he would give

General Howard a call.  After his personal experience, John might like
to go along to have a few words with Morrison himself.  In his
position, Michaels knew he would.

 Sunday, June 12th Gakona, Alaska

Ventura looked at his watch.  It had been six hours since the real test
had ended, but Morrison felt he had to play out the fiction of
conducting his calibrations.  In the end, Ventura knew that wouldn't
matter, but Morrison felt the need.  It was late, and Ventura, while
not tired, was feeling somewhat edgy.  There had been no contact from
the Chinese, and he didn't much like sitting in one place for so long,
not this far into the game.  The trailer had a stale smell to it, and
the night had cooled some, because an electric heater kept kicking on
and off.

As the HAARP system did its automatic thing, Morrison himself was lying
on the ugly brown fake-leather couch at the end of the room, fast
asleep.

Ventura's com vibrated soundlessly against his hip.  He touched the
mouthpiece of the small wireless headset he wore hooked over his left
ear.

"Yes?"

"We have company.  Two cars, four men.  They just passed Rim One."

"Talk to me."

"Tan Fords, unmarked, new, blackwall tires, what looks like government
fleet plates.  Three men, one woman, couldn't get much more than that.
Cunningham will get a better view with his digital scope when they go
under the rail overpass."

"Got it."

Ventura felt chill bumps rise on his neck, the gooseflesh warning him
of danger.  Who would come here in the middle of the night?  He looked
at his watch again.  If they were traveling the speed limit, they'd be
reaching the overpass ... right... about... now ... The phone
vibrated.

"Go."

Styles said, "From the front, three men, one woman.

Clean-cut, mid-thirties, matching dark windbreakers, blue maybe.  Hold
on, they are going past... Angle is bad here, I can't see their backs.
I got a flash of what looked like some kind of logo on the jackets from
the side, can't get it all, last letters look like H-A-L ... That's it.
Plates are like Zach said, U.S. permanent fleet."

Sounded like feds.  H-A-L.  Last few letters of "Marshal," as in
reflective yellow letters on the back of a windbreaker:

U.S. Marshal.  Of course, if it was him coming to collect Dr. Morrison,
this was the kind of thing he'd do.  Disguising your kidnap team as
cops or firemen or federal agents was clever.  Who stops a fireman on
the way to a fire?  Or a cop on his way to an accident?

Unless, of course, they were real feds.

"Got it.  Discom."

Ventura called the leader of the two men watching the gate into the
compound.

"Let them pass, but see if you can get an ear on the guard at the gate
if he lets them in."

"Copy."

Ventura broke the connection, walked to where Morrison lay sleeping.

"Wake up.  Dr.  Morrison."

"Huh?  What--?"

"Listen carefully.  My people report that there are two cars that look
like they belong to the feds on their way here."

The phone vibrated yet again.

"Go."

"Our shotgun mike picked up the exchange.  Guys in the car say they are
U.S. Marshals, come to serve a federal arrest warrant.  They asked
where they could find Morrison.

The guard told them, and let them pass."

"Got it.  Pull back to Rendezvous A, call the other teams and tell
them."

"Copy."

Ventura made another call.

"Mercury falling," he said.

"Copy.  We'll be there."

"Discom."

Ventura looked at Morrison.

"These guys convinced the gate guard they were U.S. Marshals.  They've
come to collect you."

Morrison shook his head.

"No way.  They can't know I had anything to do with this.  I covered
myself."

"Convince me."

"Nobody actually took anything from the computer files; it only looks
like they did.  I got into the HAARP

system from a Mac store in San Francisco, using a floor demo model
connected to the net.  I had a password, but I banged on the door a few
times to make it look good before I used it.  I damaged a few files on
the way in.  It was a crowded Saturday morning, nobody noticed me, I
didn't speak to anybody in the shop.  Even if somebody could backtrack
it through the store's server, it ends there--I was just another
customer browsing the hardware and I used voxax to light the system. No
hands, so no prints, no DNA.  Nobody could possibly connect it to
me."

"All right.  So if they aren't real feds, then they must be from the
Chinese."  He shook his head.

"But that doesn't scan."

"Why not?"

"The Chinese know I'm with you, and they know who I am, at least
partially.  But they only sent four people.

They must be banking on us buying the trick, and that's too many eggs
in one basket.  Unless ... this is a feint.  A ploy designed to keep
our attention while they try something else.  Yes, that makes more
sense."

"What are we going to do?"

"Leave.  That little scooter is quiet and in the dark; they won't see
us.  A pickup car is waiting at a spot where nobody will notice it."

"There are plenty of outside lights until you get well away from the
buildings," Morrison said.

"And the pad is also lit up like a Christmas tree.  They'll notice
us."

"No, they won't.  Come on."

As he followed Ventura from the trailer, terror gripped Morrison in its
clammy hand.  He needed to visit a bathroom, bad, and it was hard for
him to breathe without wanting to pant.  None of this had been in his
plan, none of it.  It didn't feel real.  It felt like some kind of
demented dream.

Since there was no way the FBI or Net Force could know who he was, it
had to be the bastard Chinese coming for him.  And he had no doubt that
if they caught him and put him in a cell with somebody who even
threatened to pull out his fingernails or crush his testicles, he'd
tell them anything they wanted to know.

And it wouldn't take long in the telling, either.

The technique for disrupting the human brain into a temporary psychosis
wasn't something easy to figure out, but once it was grasped, it was
easy enough to do.  The trick that had eluded researchers for all those
years was that while they had all the pieces to the puzzle, they just
hadn't been able to put them together.  Or even known they should.  The
broadcast frequencies had to be varied precisely, they had to run for a
very specific duration, and they had to be repeated at exact intervals.
It took a computer to run the sequence--it was too involved for a human
hand--and if one variable was off even a hair, the technique simply
wouldn't work.  The odds of happening on the proper code by accident
were astronomically high, even to achieve the partial results Morrison
had managed.

He didn't deny to himself that he had been lucky, as well as good.  And
the truth was, driving people mad had never been his goal--controlling
their actions in a more deliberate manner had been, and he had failed
in that.  It was as if he had gone searching for diamonds but had found
opals, instead.  Still valuable stones, but not what he had sought,
and-Hey!  Where was Ventura going?

"The scooter is over there," Morrison said.

"We're heading the wrong way!"

"No, we're not.  We need to do something first."

Ventura had his pistol out, and they were moving toward the power
building.  Morrison had his little gun in the pocket of his jacket, but
it offered him little comfort.

If they got past Ventura, he didn't believe he was going to be able to
stop them.  He could die here.  Tonight.  Soon.

The headlights of the approaching cars shined through the trees.  They
were almost here!

He voiced the thought: "They're almost here!"

But they were at the power building.  Ventura said, "You stay put.  I'm
going to go have a short conversation with the power supply."

Ventura vanished inside the building.

Morrison tried to calm down.  He forced himself to take long, slow
breaths, but it didn't help.  His heart was racing so hard he could
feel it pulse all over his body.  Come on, come on, come on--!

The lights died, and the heavy thrum of the diesel generators began to
fade.

Ventura appeared from nowhere.

"They want lights, they are going to have to crank those babies back
up.  Let's go" " "What about night scopes  Won't they have those?"

"I would, but it won't matter if they do.  I have a little something
for any spook eyes that might go on-line."  He patted his pocket.

"Come on, time to leave."  He smiled.

It was the most joyful expression Morrison had seen Ventura make.

It was like a glass of cold water in the face.  The realization that
came with it was: "You're enjoying this!"

"Of course.  It's what I do.  Doctor.  Stay with me."

They ran.

Ventura felt the adrenaline surge in him, and he didn't try to stop it.
Riding the hormonal high was like climbing onto a half-wild stallion.
If you could stay there and point him in the right direction, it would
be a thrilling trip at breakneck speed.  Bend him to your will just
enough, and you could fly like the wind.  Lose control, and you would
surely perish.

This was the zen of life and death, and the part of him he kept hidden
from the world.  It was the stretch, the reach, the ultimate test, the
perfect way to be totally in the moment.  The past was dead, the future
not yet born, there was only the now!  Fail, and you die.  Succeed, and
you live.

Ah, but to make it a real test, you had to level the playing field.
Four against one was not fair, not when the one was Ventura.  He had
the advantage.  They had to capture Morrison alive, so they were
hobbled.  Therefore, he would give them a chance.  He could have taken
Morrison and fled immediately.  Turning out the lights wasn't
necessary--they wouldn't be looking for two men on a scooter, they
would be expecting their quarry to be in a trailer.  Even if they were
nothing but a probe designed to keep him busy while the real attack was
mounted, Ventura was aware of this possibility, too.  He was way ahead
of them, he knew it, and in no real danger.  So he delayed.

Killed the power, which gave him darkness, but which also gave them a
warning: I know you are here.  Let's play.  Come and find me.

There was no joy in slaying an unarmed man.  The challenge was in
bypassing his trained guards to get to him.

It was the stalk that mattered most not the shot, the path and not the
destination.  Once in the proper position, any fool could pull a
trigger.  Getting to the proper position was the trick.  Always.

"This way," Morrison said.

"How can you tell?  I can't fucking see anything!"

The two cars pulled to a halt, and Ventura heard doors slamming and
voices raised.

"Trust me," Ventura said.

"I know exactly what I am doing."

His phone vibrated.

"What?"

"Another player approaching.  Black man in a new Dodge van, Alaskan
plates, looks like a rental car.  Just passed me."

Ventura frowned.  Who was this?  Just a coincidence?

Some fisherman running late for his hotel reservation, or pan of the
backup plan?  And a black man?  That would be unusual.  The Chinese
didn't much like black people.

Of course, they didn't much like anybody who wasn't Chinese.  A lot of
people in the West didn't realize that Eastern societies were the most
racist on Earth.  They not only despised and looked down on Westerners,
they despised and looked down on each other.  The Chinese hated the
Japanese who hated the Koreans who hated the Vietnamese, and all
variations thereof.  The only thing worse than being a foreigner was
being a half-breed.

Well.  Whoever he was, it didn't matter.  As long as Ventura knew where
the man was, he was no problem, just one more piece on the board he
needed to track.

"Keep me advised," Ventura said.  He tapped the headset off.

"Let's go for a little ride in the cool summer night, shall we.
Doctor?"

Morrison stared at him, and that wide-eyed sense of amazement that
arrived when he'd realized that Ventura was having fun here was still
on his face.

A man like Morrison couldn't understand it, of course.

Men like him never did.

 Sunday, June 12th Beaverton, Oregon

Tyrone stood by the Coke machine at the hotel and ran his credit card
through the scanner slot.  The credit appeared on the screen, and he
tapped the button that delivered a plastic bottle of the cola.  The
noise it made seemed loud in the quiet night.

He was still rattled.  Once everything seemed to be okay, his dad had
gone off to Alaska, to help collect the man supposedly responsible for
what had happened at the boomerang tournament.  Tyrone, Nadine, and his
mother were at the motel, miles away from the park, and the madness had
stopped, but he couldn't forget it.  It was like some kind of
nightmare.  He had wanted to kill people, and if he'd had a weapon--a
knife or a gun or a stick--he would have killed somebody.  And the
thing was, it would have felt just great to do it, too.

He sipped at the soft drink.  Life had been easier when he'd been into
computers.  He sat at home, jacked into the web, lived his life in VR.
Once he'd discovered girls and boomerangs, things had gotten a lot more
complex.  Nothing risked, nothing gained--but nothing lost, either. But
the thought of going back to where he'd been before, a web-head with
butt calluses from sitting in a chair?  That just didn't resonate. Data
interruptus, Jimmy-Joe would say.

The tournament had been canceled after all the crazy stuff.  He'd never
even gotten a chance to compete.  Given all the other crap, winning or
losing a contest like that meant zed, but even so, he wondered how he
would have done.

"Hey, Ty."

He looked up to see Nadine standing there.

"Hey," he said.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah."

"Me, neither."

They stood silently for a few seconds.

"You want a Coke?"

"I'll just have a sip of yours, if that's okay."

"Sure."  He passed her the plastic bottle and watched her sip from
it.

She handed the bottle back to him.

"You think it's true?"  she said.

"That somebody did it on purpose?"

"My dad thinks so, and he knows about stuff like this, so, yeah, I
think so."

"Why?  Why would somebody do a thing like that?  Zap people and make
them go crazy?  Make people hurt each other?"

He shook his head.

"I don't know.  I can't think of any reason good enough."

"I didn't like how it made me feel," she said.

"I was so angry.  I wanted to hurt people.  I didn't care about them at
all.  I was watching the vids on the news.  They showed a Catholic
school somewhere.  Some nuns beat a janitor to a pulp.  How could that
be?  Something that could make nuns do that, that's really scary."

He could see she was on the edge of tears, really upset.

"Yeah.  Scares me, too.  But it's okay.  My dad is going to get the
guy.  It'll be all right."

"You think so?"

"Yeah.  I do."

She gave him a little smile, and he felt better himself.

He took another sip from the Coke.  He hoped his dad would kick the
guy's ass.

Monday, June 13th Gakona, Alaska

Howard was still peeved.  The marshals were supposed to meet him at the
airport, but his plane had been delayed an hour coming out of SeaT ac
and they hadn't waited for him.  He hated being late, but there had
been no help for it.  He couldn't really bitch about it officially; Net
Force didn't have any jurisdiction in the matter per se, even though
they had gotten the warrants and the marshals would be delivering
Morrison to HQ in Quantico.  And as the commander of Net Force's
military arm, he shouldn't be out in the field on this kind of errand
anyhow, no job for a general, but it pissed him off being left behind
just the same.  It was no more than professional courtesy-he'd have
waited for them.

Howard rented a car and burned the speed limits trying to catch up, but
by the time he got to Gakona, he still hadn't seen any sign of the
marshals.  He couldn't believe he had gotten ahead of them, so they
must have already reached the HAARP compound.  Probably had already
collected Morrison and were on the way back.  Well, if they passed him
going the other way, he'd spot them, there wasn't that much traffic.
He'd seen only a few cars and trucks in the last hour of travel, and
nobody in the last fifteen minutes.  Of course, it was almost two in
the morning, and in the middle of the great northwest woods, too, not
exactly the Harbor Freeway in downtown L.A.

The narrow road he was on ran parallel to a tall chain-link fence
topped with razor wire and hung with government warning signs.  HAARP
would be on the other side of the fence, somewhere past the thick
forest of evergreens.

The call of nature that had been nagging at him for miles finally
couldn't be denied any longer.  If he didn't stop and take a whiz, he
was going to drown.

He pulled the car over, shut off the engine, and killed the headlamps.
He waited for a moment for his night vision to clear, then stepped out
of the car.

He watered the plants nearest the shoulder, felt a lot better, and
zipped up.

It was really dark out here, nothing offering relief save for a clear
sky thick with glittery stars and the glowing face of his watch.  It
was cool, but not cold, and the scent of evergreen, car exhaust, and
even urine blended into a not-unpleasant odor.  It was also quiet, save
for a few mosquitoes buzzing about.  There was something very relaxing
about being out in the middle of nowhere, nobody else around.

From the last road sign he'd seen, he judged that he was almost to the
compound's gate.  He started back toward the car when he saw a bright
flash of light over the treetops, almost like distant heat lightning, a
brief strobe against the night.  What was that?

But the light was gone, and once again the fierce darkness claimed the
night.  And that was odd, because this close, he expected some kind of
glow from the HAARP compound bleeding into the sky.  He had been on
night patrols in the outback where you could see the light from a
campfire or a propane lantern for miles.  They must keep some lights
on, right?

Almost immediately after the light faded, he heard three shots, a
stacatto pap!  pap!  pap!  followed by two more that resonated with a
louder, sharper crack!  crack!  The shots echoed, and it was hard to
pinpoint the direction, but it sounded as if they were to his right and
behind him.

Inside the fence, and not too far off.  There was no question in
Howard's mind that the reports came from weapons, and they sounded like
handguns.  Two shooters, close together, using different calibers.  The
second of them, he was almost certain, was a .357 Magnum, a round with
which he was very familiar, having fired tens of thousands of them
himself.  Two shooters firing at the same target?

Or at each other?

Almost reflexively, he reached down to where the new revolver rode back
of his right hip, to touch the gun's butt and reassure himself it was
still there.

It could have been a lot of things--spot lighters doing some illegal
hunting, drunks blasting at beer bottles, maybe even a couple of
campers attacked in their tent by a bear and cutting loose at it--but
knowing there were U.S. Marshals serving an arrest warrant on a man
suspected of involvement in multiple deaths, Howard had to consider
that maybe something had gone wrong with the operation.  And what would
campers or hunters be doing inside the fence?

He pulled the door open and slid back into the rental car, started the
engine, and hit the light switch.  The entrance gate was ahead of him,
and that was the way to get into the compound, but he spun the wheel
and the car into a one-eighty and headed back the way he had come.

When guns go off, that's where you find the action.

It was half a mile away when things got tricky.  Because it was so dark
and he was moving and watching the fence to his left, and because the
black SUV was parked off to the right in the trees, he almost missed
it.  A glint of light off the windshield--the SUV was facing the road
at a right angle--was what he caught, and a fast glance didn't give him
much more.  He took his foot off the gas pedal, but managed to keep
from hitting the brakes, so his taillights didn't flare.  He kept
going, considering his options.

The SUV could have been parked there empty for days, for all he knew.
Maybe it belonged to those hypothetical campers shooting at the equally
hypothetical bear.  For some reason in that moment, an old memory
popped up:

An Alaskan hunter he'd known had once told him that if you had to stop
a really big bear, you needed a heavy rifle or a shotgun with slugs to
do it.  He said that when newbies to the tundra asked about which
caliber handguns to carry, they were told it didn't really matter, but
that they should file the front sight off nice and smooth--that way it
wouldn't hurt so much when the bear took it away from them and shoved
it up where the sun didn't shine ... Options, John, options!

He could keep going and do nothing.  He could keep going, use his
virgil, and call for help.  Of course he was hours by road or even air
from any law to speak of, and that was too long.  Besides, until he
knew what he was facing, he couldn't risk using his virgil.  There was
a chance that the perpetrators, whoever they were, would pick up his
call.  They wouldn't be able to decode it, but they might trace his
location--and at the very least they would know he was still out
there.

No, it was against SOP, but he had no choice.  What he was going to do
was keep going until he was around a curve or far enough away so
anybody who might be in the SUV would think he was gone, then he would
pull over and backtrack on foot.  He was dressed in jeans, black
running shoes, and a dark green T-shirt, with a dark green windbreaker,
so he'd be practically invisible in the trees.

He had some bug dope in his kit, though the mosquitoes didn't usually
bother him that much.  He had his little SL4 flashlight from Underwater
Kinetics, and he had the Phillips and Rodgers with its six rounds, a
speed strip with six more rounds zipped into his jacket pocket.  What
else did he need for a walk in the Alaskan woods at night?

The idea of action filled him with sudden purpose.  As the road curved,
he killed the lights and coasted off the shoulder.  He pulled the car
behind a patch of scrub brush--not perfect, but what cover was
available.  He switched the dome light off before he opened the door,
and as soon as the trunk light went on, he grabbed it to block the
glow, and collected his kit bag with his free hand.  He fished out the
flashlight and stuck it into his back pocket, found two more speed
strips of ammo and pocketed those.  Found the bug dope and a packet
of

 E

waterproof matches, too.  He remembered to shut off his virgil, then
started working his way back along the treeline toward the SUV.  It was
maybe three-quarters of a mile back.  It would only take a few minutes
to get there.  He'd scope out the scenario and see what he could figure
out.

He could call Net Force or the local state cops and give them a sitrep
after that.

Man.  He'd never expected this, but he was in it now, and he'd have to
follow up and see it through--whatever it was... Ventura glanced at his
watch.  Just past 0200.  He had given them the clue by killing the
lights, but the kidnap team still hadn't spotted him.  He frowned. Were
they really that bad?  And where was the genuine attack, if these four
were only faking?  Were they that good, that his people hadn't spotted
them?

He called the surveillance team.

"Where is my black man?"

"Still heading toward the gate.  He passed the Mercury Falling point a
minute ago.  Should be there soon."

They'd be long gone by the time anybody came through the front gate and
got here.

"All right.  Let me know when--" He cut it off as he spotted the
threat.

Two seconds later, Morrison saw it, too.

"Look!"

One of the kidnappers had left his vehicle and circled around one of
the trailers.  The man was twenty-five, maybe twenty-eight meters away.
Dim as it was, it was only his darker form against the lighter color of
the building that gave him away.  Was he sight-or hearing-augmented?
Did he see them?  Could he hear the little fuel cell motor?

Ventura could hear the man, because Ventura was wearing bat ears--tiny
electronic plugs that functioned both as a hearing aid for normal
sounds and suppressors for sudden loud noises.

Ventura pulled the flash grenade from his pocket, thumbed the safety
ring out and flipped the cover up, then pressed the timer button.  He
had five seconds, and he wanted it to go off in the air.  One ... two
... three ... four--throw, the overhand lob, up and outward ... Ventura
closed his eyes against the bright flash he knew was coming.  It
wouldn't make much noise.

He could see the photonic blast through his closed eyelids anyway.  It
faded, and he opened his eyes at the same time he heard the kidnapper's
startled yell.  If the man was wearing spook eyes that would close the
automatic shutters for a heartbeat.  If he wasn't, his night vision was
going to be gone.

Ventura drew his pistol and goosed the little scooter.

The kidnapper fired three shots, but from the angle of the flashes, he
was shooting way behind them.  Probably no spook eyes then.

Ventura indexed the flashes and shot back, two rounds.

His own earplugs cut out the harsh noise within a hundredth of a
second, suppressing the hurtful decibel level.

He heard the man scream, and heard him hit the ground.

One down.

He circled the scooter away and back toward the fence, along the path
he'd decided upon earlier.  He did a tactical reload, changed
magazines, dropping the one missing a round into his pocket.  Something
bothered him, something was wrong, and it took a few seconds before he
figured out what it was:

Why had the kidnapper shot at them?  Two men on a scooter, more than
twenty meters away, in the dark?  It was a very risky shot; Ventura was
an expert with his pistol and he wouldn't have chanced it.  Even if the
shooter knew which man was which, how could he take the risk of hitting
Morrison?  He'd have to know that if he killed the scientist, the game
was over, and his ass would be fried.  Could the Chinese have hired
somebody that foolish?  Somebody who would panic at a bright light and
accidentally cook the golden goose?

It was one more inconsistency that didn't add up.  But he'd have to
work it out later--there were still three of them running around, and
the one who had gotten into range had surprised him.  You didn't want
to tilt the playing field too far in your enemy's favor.  Ventura did
not have a death wish.

"You shot him," Morrison said.

"Yes, I did."

"Is he ... dead, do you think?"

Ventura shrugged.

"Who cares?  He knew the job was dangerous when he took it.  If he
didn't, then he's an idiot.

Or he was an idiot.  And he shot at us first, remember?

We were just defending ourselves."

Morrison didn't say anything.

The fence was through that patch of woods just ahead, and there was a
path through them.  They could play Q&A later.  One step at a time.

Be in the moment...  Monday, June 13th Gakona, Alaska

It had been a long time since Howard had done any real hunting, and
even the most realistic VR scenario was not the same as creeping
through the woods and sneaking up on a vehicle that might or might not
contain unfriendlies.

In this case, it had to be done by feel--it was so damned dark he ran a
real risk of smacking his face into trees if he didn't go slow.  He
couldn't use his flashlight, that would be way too easy to spot, and he
didn't even want to think about bumping into some hungry critter bigger
than he was.

His advantage was that if he couldn't see them, they probably couldn't
see him.  Even if there were a couple of bad guys in the SUV and they
had starlight scopes, he'd be hard to spot unless they were looking
right at him, and unless they had eyes in the backs of their heads, or
just happened to have their scopes pointed at the real-view mirror,
they weren't apt to be looking right at him.

Once he'd left the edge of the woods and moved in deeper to circle
around behind the vehicle, it took a few minutes to crawl up behind it.
He inched his way forward in the old knees and elbows locomotion, until
he was only a couple of meters behind the black SUV, a Ford Explorer.

The thing had tinted windows so dark he probably couldn't have seen
inside even in bright sunshine, much less the near-pitch night out
here.  Nobody inside smoked cigarettes to reveal themselves with a
telltale glow, there was no radio playing, nobody talking.  No sign
that the Explorer was anything but empty.  And wouldn't he feel stupid
if it turned out he was stalking an empty car?

Yeah.  But worry about that later.

He inched closer, until he was right at the back bumper.

He had in mind listening very carefully, maybe making a little noise to
see if there would be any kind of response, but he didn't get that far.
A man's voice said, "I gotta piss."

"We're supposed to stay in the car until we see the signal."

"Fuck the signal.  I can see it just as well taking a leak as I can
from in here."

The passenger door opened, but the dome light didn't go on.  The door
stayed open and the sound of footsteps approaching on dry fir needles
got louder fast.  The guy was walking around to the back of the
truck!

Even this dark, he'd likely see or hear Howard if he tried to crawl
away.

Howard flattened himself fully prone and used his knees to push himself
under the Explorer.

Three heartbeats later, the sound of a stream of urine splashing
against the side of a tree came loud in the night.

It went on for a long time, and Howard could even hear the man's pants'
zipper going back up when he was done.

The peeing man was halfway back to the car door when the driver said,
"There it is!  Come on, get in!"

From his vantage point under the vehicle, Howard couldn't see much, but
he was able to catch a glimmer of light from across the road.

That would be the signal.

-Who was giving the signal and what exactly it meant, well, that wasn't
altogether clear, but the gist of it was fairly evident to Howard.
Somebody was on the other side of the fence that surrounded HAARP, and
these two were there to meet whoever it was.  His money was on that
somebody being Morrison, otherwise it was going to be one hell of a
coincidence.

The Ford's engine cranked, and that was incredibly loud from where
Howard lay, his head directly under it.

He heard the clunk!  as the driver shifted the transmission from park
into gear.

If the guy swung any kind of sharp turn when he pulled out, he'd feel a
big bump at the same time John Howard felt the back wheel crush him. He
took a deep breath-The driver pulled straight out, and across the road
before he wheeled the big SUV into a tight right turn broadside to
Howard.  The peeing man jumped out and ran around the car toward the
fence, Howard could see him in the red glow of the brake lights.  He
was carrying what looked like a big pair of hedge clippers, and it took
a second for Howard to realize that the tool wasn't for trimming bushes
but was actually a pair of bolt cutters.

This was definitely a bad business, whatever it was.

Howard came up, pulled his revolver and started across the narrow road
toward the Explorer, crouching low as he moved.  There would be at
least three of them, maybe more, and covering them all would be a
bitch, but what choice did he have?  He couldn't just let them drive
away--at least not until he knew what was going on.

The pl inks  of the cutters snipping the chain links sounded crisp in
the night.

Howard had almost made it to the Ford's passenger door when the driver
looked up and saw him.

"Incoming!"  the driver screamed.

"Incoming!"

Howard zigged to his left, toward the car's rear, just as a gunshot
exploded inside the Explorer.  An orange tongue of fire reached from
the driver, the passenger window shattered, and the bullet passed
somewhere to his right, close enough so he heard it whistle by.

Bad guys--no goddamned doubt about it.

The noise inside the SUV must have been deafening.

The driver took his foot off the brake, and the brake lights went out,
plunging the scene back into darkness.

Howard still had the after-image of the gunshot seared into his retina,
and his rods and cones or whatever weren't doing their job.  He rounded
the back of the Explorer, dropped prone, and looked for a target.

"Move the car," somebody said.  They didn't sound the least bit
excited.

The driver stepped on the gas.  The smell of burned tire filled the air
as the Explorer screeched and lurched forward.

Howard's central vision was still fogged, but he turned his head to the
left and caught a peripheral movement.

They had shot at him, therefore they were bad guys.  He hesitated for
maybe a quarter second, then lined the revolver up on the movement and
squeezed the trigger.  He remembered to close his eyes as the shot went
off, to save what vision he had left, and then he rolled to his left as
fast as he could, three complete revolutions.

Somebody screamed, and somebody returned fire.  The dragon's tongue
muzzle blast lit the scene just enough for Howard to see there were two
men standing next to a hole clipped through the fence, a third man
lying on the ground.  A bullet spanged off the road where he had been
and the ricochet whined off into the trees.

Howard scraped his elbows on the road as he swung the revolver sideways
and pointed it where he'd seen the flash-"Move," a man said, insistent,
but not panicky.

Whoever he is, he's a lot calmer than I am-The scream of brakes forced
Howard to glance away from his target zone just as he cranked off two
more shots.

He rolled again, and saw the Explorer's headlights flash on as the SUV
did a rubber-burning one-eighty.

The driver was going to put some light on the subject, and that was
bad-An answering pair of shots spewed more orange, and two more bullets
hit the road inches away.  If he hadn't rolled, he'd have eaten both of
them, and even so, the shooter had almost anticipated enough to hit
him.

Howard leaped up.  He had to get off the road before-Too late.  The
SUV's headlights found him.  He took three steps then dived for the
side of the road, hit in a sloppy shoulder roll, came up, and ran for
the trees.  More gunshots reached for him, but missed.  The roar of the
SUV's engine increased as it headed back in his direction.

The driver angled the vehicle, trying to find him with the light.

Howard slipped on something, fell, and rolled, ending up on his back,
feet facing the oncoming Explorer.  He pulled his feet toward his butt,
propped the revolver on top of his left knee, got a nice clear sight
picture outlined against the oncoming headlights.  He aimed at the
windshield on the driver's side.  The SUV was fifty meters away and
closing.  He pulled the trigger, one, two, three, four-The gun stopped
shooting after three times, clicked empty, but the SUV slewed off the
road and angled into the fence, bowing a big section before it took out
a post and stopped.

His piece was empty, and there was still too much reflected light out
here; he felt like a bug under a microscope.

He scrabbled up and into the trees, managed to run into one with his
right shoulder and spin himself around, but at least he was hidden.  He
dropped to the ground on his butt, thumbed the cylinder latch, shoved
the cylinder out with his left hand, hammered the extractor rod with
the palm.  Empty shells flew.  He grabbed a speed strip and started to
reload.  One, two, three-The SUV's motor raced, and there came the
sound of metal tearing.  The motor roared louder, the tires screamed-He
must have missed the driver.  Either that, or the other two had gotten
to the SUV.

Load, load, come on, come on--!

--four, five, six!

He snapped the cylinder closed and crawled toward the road.  As he
reached the edge of the trees, the Explorer roared past, accelerating
away.

"Fuck that!"  Howard yelled.  He scrambled up, ran into the road, and
whipped his gun up in both hands.  The SUV was really moving; it was
eighty, ninety meters away as he cooked off all six as fast as he
could, closing his eyes to avoid the muzzle flashes-Again the SUV
squealed into a one-eighty turn, and the lights came around to find
Howard.  But the car didn't start back, it just sat there.  Ninety
meters--okay, okay, he had time to reload again-The SUV's door slammed
shut.  Somebody got out?

Howard ejected the empties, reached for another speed loader.  Plenty
of time-He saw the muzzle flash, felt the kick in his belly from a
heavy boot as he went down, then heard the boom!  from the weapon.

Fuck!  He was shot and his gun was empty.  His side burned, over his
right hip.  Get up, John, get up, now!

He half-crawled, half-rolled off the road and back to the woods.  In
the trees, he kept moving, his fist jammed over the bullet wound.  He
got as far as he could before his legs just quit working.  He sat,
fumbled for his virgil, managed to trigger the distress signal as he
felt himself graying out.  His last thoughts as he lost consciousness
were of disbelief: How could somebody have hit a target at ninety
meters like that?  With a handgun, and only the headlights of a car in
the dark?

Hell of a shot... Gakona, Alaska

"What the hell happened?"  Morrison said again and again.

"What the hell happened?"

The cool night air whistled through the car from the three holes in the
windshield.  Morrison, in the back, was probably in shock, but at that,
he was a lot better off than Ventura's two men.  One of them was dead
on the seat next to him, slumped against the passenger door; he'd taken
one right between the eyes.  The other man was lying next to the fence
back at the pickup point, and he was just as dead, one to the heart.
Nice work.

The black man had done it.  Ventura didn't know who the hell he had
been, but he'd screwed things up pretty good.  How had the black guy
managed to find them and set up his ambush?  That had been a good
trick.  Still, it didn't matter.  He was probably dead or dying himself
by now.  Ventura had put one solidly into him; he wasn't going to be
causing any more trouble.  If he was the Chinese's primary attack, he'd
failed, even though he had caused a lot of trouble.  He should have
been wearing a vest.  Odd that he wasn't.  Ventura had his on.

The client was alive, and they would rendezvous with more of Ventura's
team in a couple of minutes.  Nice try, but no cigar.

"What the hell happened?"

"Relax, it's okay now.  They tried, but they failed.  We'll regroup and
wait for them to contact us."

"Are you crazy?"

"Listen, you can't take this personally.  It's just business.

They tried, they missed, so now they'll deal.  Nothing has changed."

"I could have gotten killed!"

"And you still could.  But none of this matters.  What matters is that
you aren't dead now.  You still have something they want, and they are
still going to have to pay to get it.  You move on."

"This is madness," Morrison said.

"Way of the world.  Doctor.  If you don't want to get hit, don't step
into the ring.  You're here now, so we have to make the best of it.
Think of it as a great story to tell your new friends someday."

He saw Morrison in the rearview mirror, his face dimly lit by the
instrument lights.  The man looked as if somebody had just told him
there was a rattlesnake in his pocket.

Ventura watched the road, his pistol in his lap.  Amateurs just didn't
understand how the world worked.  They -took everything so personal.

 Tuesday, June 14th Quantico, Virginia

"Sir?"

Michaels came out of a shallow sleep, blinking.  He was in his office,
on the couch.  What--?

One of the night crew--Askins?  Haskins?--stood in the doorway.  Must
not be time for shift change yet.  Michaels sat up.

"Yes?"

"We got a distress signal from General Howard's virgil.

From Alaska."

"What?"  He still wasn't quite awake and tracking yet.

Where was Toni?

"Federal Marshals found him, he's been shot.  An Alaska National Guard
copter is on the way; he's up near Gakona."

He looked at his watch.  It was six a.m. He needed to wash his face and
to find Toni.  What had John gotten into?

But before he could reach the door, his own com chirped its
top-priority tone.  He hurried to the receiver and picked it up.

"John?"

"No, it's Melissa Allison."

The director.  What was she doing up at this hour?

She didn't give him time to wonder: "I just got a call from Adam
Brickman in the U.S. Marshals office.  One of his men was wounded in a
shoot-out in Nowhere, Alaska, attempting to serve an arrest warrant
authorized by your office.  So was General John Howard.  They are
alive, just barely, on their way to a hospital in Anchorage, but
Brickman isn't happy.  I'm not happy, either.  Commander, because when
he started chewing me out for not warning his people this was a
shoot-sit, I didn't know what the hell he was talking about."

Uh-oh.

"I'm sorry.  Madam Director, I didn't realize there was any danger."

"You sent marshals and the head of Net Force's military arm to pick up
somebody--which is outside your charter, unless there are special
circumstances.  I'm going to be in my office in forty minutes.  I
suggest you be there when I arrive."

"Yes, ma'am," Michaels said.

He cradled the receiver.  Great.  Just great.  He had a federal marshal
and John Howard shot up and the director of the FBI ready to tear him a
new asshole.  Great way to start the day, wasn't it?  Maybe if he was
lucky, a big meteor would fall on him.

"Alex?"

Toni.

"Hey," he said.

"What's up?  The place feels as if it's about to explode."

He rubbed at his face with both hands.

"Walk with me and I'll fill you in."

In the air over British Columbia

Because Ventura wanted to have a few words with the Chinese, he had
Morrison's phone when it rang.  He used the headset, the engine and
wind noise of the DC-3 being enough to interfere with hearing.

"Dr.  Morrison?"

"No.  Ventura."

"Ah, Luther.  How are you?"

"Why, I'm just fine.  Chilly.  Though I can't say the same for your
people.  The feint was pretty good, but the follow-through was, well,
sad.  I expected better."

There was a moment's hesitation.  Then Wu said, "Much as I'd like to
turn this to my advantage, I have to confess I don't know what you are
talking about, Luther."

"Come on, we're professionals here, I don't hold it against you, I
realize it was just business."

"Nope, sorry, I'm not tracking."

Ventura considered it.  There was no real reason for Wu to be coy.  He
knew that if they tried to snatch Morrison and failed, Ventura wouldn't
care; it was how things were done, they were men of the world here.

"So you didn't send people to, ah, have an informal chat with my
client?"

"No."

Ventura heard the "Not yet" in that single word, but he also had to
stop and think real hard about the implications.

Of course Wu would lie if it was to his advantage, that was to be
expected.  But Wu had to know he couldn't gull anybody into believing
that the Chinese were benevolent businessmen who'd never stoop to such
a thing as kidnapping and torture.  Sure, they'd pay if they had to
pay, but if they could get what they wanted for free, they'd do it.
They were as cheap as anybody else.

So lying wouldn't serve him at this point--Ventura didn't trust Wu as
far as he could fly by flapping his arms, and Wu knew it.  And if Wu
hadn't sent a team, then who were those men?

Had he just shot a couple of real federal marshals?

"Dr.  Morrison is okay, isn't he?"  Wu asked.

"No problems with our little transaction?  We were quite impressed with
the test.  We are ready to get down to brass tacks."

"He's fine.  Here he is."  Ventura waved at Morrison, who was listening
to his half of the conversation.  He held his thumb over the
transmitter mike.

"Wu.  He's ready to deal.  And don't get bent with him--he didn't send
his people after you.  Those were legitimate feds."

Morrison's eyes went wide.

"It couldn't be--" "You screwed up.  Doctor.  They figured it out,
somehow, and now we have a whole new set of problems."

He handed Morrison the phone and headset.  He had to make a couple of
calls on his own to verify this, but if it turned out to be what he was
now sure it was, he had some serious thinking to do.  Very serious
thinking.

Quantico, Virginia

Alex had gone off to see the director, and Toni took the opportunity to
go to the gym.  It wasn't as big as the rooms in the main FBI compound,
but she didn't need much space.  And early as it was, she was the only
person there.

Nobody had gotten around to cleaning out her locker-there was still a
pair of sweats and a sports bra folded neatly there, along with her
Discipline martial arts shoes, and, by chance, the clothes were still
clean, though a little stale.  She shook everything out and dressed,
then padded into the gym.  She could have worked out in her street
clothes, she made a point of doing that every so often, but since she
didn't have any clean ones to change into afterward, that would have to
wait for another time.  If you couldn't do it in your ordinary wear, it
didn't matter how terrific a move was; if you couldn't use it when you
needed it, it was pointless for self-defense.  In a street fight you
wouldn't have time to take off your shoes, get dressed in your gi, nor
ten minutes to stretch and warm up.  Sweats and limbering exercises
saved wear and tear on your clothes, muscles, and joints in the long
run, that was why you did them, but they were luxuries, not
necessities-"Toni?"

She looked up and saw Jay.

"Hey, Jay."

"Boss around?"

"He had to go see the Dragon Lady."

"Okay, I'll call him."  He was in a hurry.  He turned and started to
leave.

"What's up.  Jay?"

He paused.

"You knew they found John Howard shot in the woods across the road from
the HAARP compound?"

"Yeah."

"He was choppered to a hospital in Anchorage, and it looks like he's
gonna be okay."

"Thank God."

"Yeah.  He was supposed to be on vacation with his family.  How'd he
get to Alaska?"

Toni shook her head.  Here was another problem for Alex, one he didn't
need.

He needed her.  But she couldn't go back to work for him.  She
couldn't.

Madam Director Allison was royally pissed.  In her shoes, Michaels
might have felt the same way, but he wasn't in her shoes, he was in
his, and they were getting real damp from nervous sweat.

"And you felt you couldn't pass this along to me?  I had to find it out
from some other agency?"

He sat in the chair in front of her desk and nodded.

"I

didn't see the need.  Four federal marshals went to pick up one
desk-jockey scientist.  I met the man.  He could hardly stand up
without losing his balance.  He had no history of violence, no record
of having purchased weapons.

I asked John to go along to keep us in the loop.  It was a milk run."

"Yes, a run that turned into the milkman taking a bullet in the pelvis
under the edge of his vest, and your meek scientist disappearing, not
even to mention the head of your military arm taking a round."  She
looked at the flat screen on her desk.

"According to the guards at this HAARP place, Morrison wasn't alone. He
was accompanied by a Dr.  Dick Grayson.  His identity turns out to be
bogus."

Despite the situation, Michaels smiled.

"Something funny about that I'm missing.  Commander?"

"Dick Grayson is the secret identity of Batman's sidekick, Robin."

"Yes, well, "Robin' is likely the man who plugged the marshal, along
with John Howard, on his way out of town.

The rest of the arrest team managed to gather themselves enough to pick
up the trail.  Mormon and his gun-toting friend took a small cart
through the woods, cut a hole in the fence, and were presumably picked
up by accomplices.

The marshals found an armed dead man next to the hole in the fence,
shot in the heart.  No ID on the man.

"There were signs that a car had left the road and plowed into the
fence fifty yards away.  The marshals called in the state police, and a
few minutes ago a shot- up Ford Explorer was found at an old airstrip.
There were three bullet holes in the windshield, five more holes in the
back loading gate and bumper, and another dead man in the front seat.
No identification on him, either.  Probably Howard's work."

"Huh," Michaels said.

"Oh, you can do better than that.  Commander.  You are supposed to be
playing with computers.  You are supposed to be finding and busting
pirate ships in the Gulf peddling Viagra and steroids and diet pills
over the internet without prescriptions, or hunting down teenaged
hackers who post porno in church web pages.  You went outside your
authority, and I don't know what it is you stepped into, but whatever
it is, it is on your shoes and it is your responsibility now.  I want
to know just what the hell is going on--" His virgil, which he had
forgotten to turn off, bleated the opening notes from the old rock and
roll song, "Bad to the Bone."

Dah, dah, dah, dan, dah, dump!

The director frowned.

"Sorry," he said.  He reached for the virgil to shut it off, but saw
Jay's face on the tiny screen.  If Gridley knew he was here, he
wouldn't have bothered him if it wasn't important.

"Jay?"

"Looks like John Howard is gonna make it.  Boss."

"Thank God!"

"Already sent a few prayers in His direction."

"I appreciate the call, Jay," Michaels said.  He discommed, then looked
at the director.

"Howard is going to pull through."

"That's good news, at least.  Why don't you see if you can't add to
it?"

 Tuesday, June 14th Anchorage, Alaska

When John Howard awoke, the first face he saw belonged to Sergeant
Julio Fernandez.  With consciousness came the awareness that he was in
a bed, in a hospital room, and that his right side and belly hurt like
hell.  He also had a headache, his mouth was dry, and his arm had an IV
tube running into it.  His last memory was of passing out in the woods,
and of all the hoopla before that--he knew what had happened.  He had
been shot.

"He's awake," Fernandez said.

"How bad?"  Howard asked.

"John!"  That was Nadine.

He turned his head slightly--that was a good sign, he could do that.

"Hey, babe.  Julio?"

"You're shy a loop of small intestine, but you won't have to poop into
a bag for the rest of your life or any 1

thing.  Won't even have a bullet scar in the front, they took that out
when they went in to fix your plumbing, but you will have one in the
back--round went right through, didn't hit anything else worth
mentioning.  Missed a kidney by a cun--uh, by a hair."

Howard nodded.

"Thanks."

Nadine was there then, and there were tears and hugging.

After which she called him a few names, the least of which was
"stupid."  Man, he was glad to see her.

"Dad?"

"Hey, son."

Fernandez cranked the bed so Howard could sit up.

Tyrone came over and smiled at him.

Howard said, "Where's your little friend?"

Tyrone frowned, then saw Howard grin and realized it was a joke.

"She's in the waiting room.  I'll go tell her you're okay.  They
wouldn't let anybody but family in."

Howard looked at Fernandez.  He shrugged.

"I told them I was your brother.  They decided it wasn't worth arguing
about."

A nurse came in, asked a couple of questions, then looked at the
beeping machine to which he was wired.

"The doctor will be in to see you in just a minute."

"Uh-huh.  Sure.  I've heard that one before."

She shook her head and left.

"How long have I been out?"

"Not long," Fernandez said.

"Been about six hours since you got here."

"Where is here?"

"Anchorage.  That's in Alaska."

"Thank you for that information, Sergeant.  How did you get here so
fast?"

"I have a friend in the Air Force who owed me a big favor.  You haven't
lived until you've done a supersonic barrel roll.  Yee-haw."

Nadine said, "Are you okay, John?"

"I've felt better, but yeah, I'm okay."

"Good.  I have to go to the bathroom.  Stay right here."

He laughed.

"Don't do that.  It hurts to laugh."

She headed for the bathroom.  Howard grinned as he watched her walk
away, then looked at Fernandez again.

"You want to tell me about it?"

"Why don't you go first?  I'll fill in what we know that you don't."

Howard nodded.  He laid it out, the whole thing; it was vividly clear
in his mind.

When he was done, Fernandez nodded in return.

"Ninety yards, huh?  Hell of a shot."

"That's what I thought.  I wouldn't want to meet this guy one-on-one in
the daylight."

"Your tactics could have been better."

"I lie corrected.  Sergeant.  Your turn."

"Well, you actually did better than he did.  The marshals had one
wounded, but they collected two corpses, one by the fence, one in the
SUV.  One in the car was in the passenger seat when they found him, but
holes in the windshield and spatter pattern says he got it while
driving.

How many rounds did you fire at the driver?

"Three."

"All in the glass, four-inch group.  And they counted five holes in the
back."

"I shot six."

"You missed one.  You need more practice."

"Five out of six at ninety yards, in the dark, car going away?  I don't
think so.  I do think I'm gonna keep that

Medusa," he said.

"I feel a certain bond with it.  Go ahead."

"No ID on the dead men, nothing useful in their pockets or clothes,
which makes them pros.  Feebs are running prints, nothing yet, but I'd
guess we're talking some kind of mercenaries.  Our boy Morrison must
know he has reason to rent serious muscle.  Everybody and his kid
sister is looking for him.  Some kind of plane took off from an old
field not far away, no ID on it yet, but it must have hugged the ground
for a ways.  Nobody's radar spotted it."

Howard's wife came back from the bathroom, and within a few seconds the
doctor came in.  He was maybe sixty, iron-gray hair cut short, in a
white shirt and slacks and a lab coat.

"Good afternoon.  I'm Dr.  Clements.  How are you feeling.  General?"

"I'm ready to run a marathon.  Right after breakfast."

"Yeah, I bet.  Let me poke and prod a little here.  Folks, if you'll
step outside?"

"Nothing he's got we haven't seen," Fernandez said.

"Humor me," Clements said.

"You heard the man," Howard said.

"Maybe I don't want you to see my new tattoo."

Fernandez grinned.

"I got a few calls to make, anyhow.

I don't know why, but there are people who care if you croak."

As he started to walk away, Howard said, "Thanks for stopping by.
Sergeant."

"Hey, no problem.  It was a slow day at the office anyway."

Nadine said, "You stupid, stupid, stupid mea} Would it break your faces
to say you care?"

Fernandez looked at her deadpan: "No, ma'am, but I'm pretty certain our
balls would fall off."

You really shouldn't laugh after being shot in the gut, you really
shouldn't.

Quantico, Virginia

Tom stood outside HQ and stared into the cloudy blue sky.  Going to
rain, she guessed.

Yeah, and maybe if you 're real lucky, lightning will strike you.

She sighed.  How did she get into situations like this?

She had just come from her meeting with Director Allison, and the good
news was that she had been offered a job.  The bad news was ... that
she had been offered a job.  And what a job--a newly created position,
special assistant to the director, and liaison to Net Force.

She would be working with Alex, but not for him.  And she would be
responsible for conveying the wishes of the director to Net Force in
such a way as to make certain that the "interface" between the bureau
and Net Force would be more "cleanly meshed."

Translation: She would be looking over Alex's shoulder, making sure he
didn't screw up.

She didn't have to take it, of course.  She could walk away, and she
would have, except that it was the perfect job.  She'd be in fairly
close contact with Alex, she could cover him if he did stub his toe now
and then, and she'd still be working for the government.  With a grade
and pay raise, to boot.  Essentially, she would be Alex's equal at
work.

The thing was--how was she going to tell him?  He might not see it for
what it was, and knowing Alex, he might feel, well, upset.

She didn't want to upset him.  Then again, it wouldn't really hurt him,
would it?  And in the long run, it could be better for their
relationship.

Ah, said her inner voice, rationalization rears its ugly head!

"Shut up," she told her inner voice.

A Marine lieutenant walking past glanced at her, but apparently decided
she wasn't talking to him.

She didn't have to take the job.  She told the director she'd have to
think it over, that she'd get back to her.  But she had made up her
mind.

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Morrison never thought he would be glad to see the gates of a racist
militia compound, but as soon as they closed behind the car, he felt a
lot better.

General Bull Smith was waiting at the main compound, and as soon as
Ventura had alighted, he made straight for the man.

"Everything go okay.  Colonel?"

"More or less, sir.  We had some problems.  I don't want you to get
blindsided by this, so I'll just tell you up front--we are going to get
some heat because of a few things that went down."

Smith smiled.

"Heat doesn't bother us at all.  Idaho summers'll give Hell a run for
the money sometimes."

"Some of this could be from our own side."

Morrison watched Smith take this in.

"That a fact?"

"You'll hear about it on the news soon enough.  I lost two men.  A
couple of federal marshals went down, too."

"No shit?"

"I don't think they know who we are.  And they can't know where we
went."

Smith nodded.

"Well.  Revolution might be starting sooner than expected.  We're
ready, if it comes to that."

"I don't believe it will.  General, but I had to bring you up to
speed."

"I appreciate it.  Colonel.  Why don't y'all come on in and have a
beer?  Got barbecued pork cooking."

"That sounds great," Ventura said.

After Smith was out of earshot, Morrison, mindful of listening devices,
said, "Good that you updated the general."

What he meant was "Why the hell did you tell him?"

Venture's answer also carried a hidden meaning: He said, "I expect the
general's own intel sources would have gotten it in short order
anyhow."  And what Morrison heard was "He needed to hear it from us,
just in case he ever got a clue."

"What now?"  Morrison asked.

"We wait for our friends to get in touch with us as to the transfers on
both sides of the negotiation.  Since nobody trusts anybody--nor should
they--certain safeguards must be put into effect.  We'll have to work
those out."

"They won't come here?"

"Wishful thinking.  Doctor.  No, they'll want a place of their
choosing.  They'll settle for one of our choosing, but it'll have to be
a lot more neutral than an armed camp where the shape of their eyes and
sallow skin color might get them shot, just for the fun of it. Wouldn't
you?"

"I suppose so."

"You suppose correctly.  This is where it really gets tricky."

Morrison stared at him.

Ventura chuckled.

"We're in the tiger's cage, and he's not made of paper.  Any mistakes
now, and he eats us.

Speaking of which, shall we try some of that barbecue?

I'm starving."

Morrison shook his head.  The last thing he felt like doing was
eating.

 Tuesday, June 14th Quantico, Virginia

On the phone, Michaels realized he was all knotted up as he sat hunched
forward in his office chair.  He tried to relax.  Probably an oxymoron,
that, trying to relax.  Nonetheless, he took a deep breath and let it
out slowly, and allowed his shoulders to slump with his exhalation.  It
helped a little.  He said, "So what's your take on it, John?"

Howard didn't sound as if he had been shot and almost killed only hours
ago.  He said, "Morrison is our boy.  No reason for him to resist the
marshals otherwise, and damned sure no reason for him to have shooters
on hand to resist with.  If we can keep him away from HAARP or any of
the other transmitters like it, we can stop the attacks."

Michaels asked the question that had been bothering him.

"Why would he do this?  Drive people to a killing madness?"

There was a pause.

"I don't know.  Maybe he's crazy himself."

Michaels sighed.  The man hadn't seemed crazy when he'd been sitting
right here in this office, talking about this stuff.  In retrospect, it
was obvious that Morrison had been covering his ass, trying to
misdirect Net Force, and except for Jay's talking to a security guard,
he'd done a good job of it.  So he wasn't that crazy.  He'd known they
might come looking for him, known it and thought to head it off in
advance.  Didn't sound crazy.

Why had he done it?  To see if he could?  Once would have proven that,
twice made it certain.  Three times was overkill.  If he had planned on
extortion, he'd screwed up--they knew who he was, and had an idea of
what it was he had done, if not actually how he'd pulled it off, so any
threat he had in mind was dead--especially since he no longer had the
tools to do it at his disposal.  This wasn't something you could cobble
together with a kit from Radio Shack

So far.  Jay hadn't been able to find anything else that directly
connected Morrison to the events in China or Portland.  Hell, if he
hadn't come in.  Net Force wouldn't have had a clue about any of this.
Maybe the guy was too smart for his own good.  What he'd overlooked had
been so simple, so basic, that it seemed incredibly stupid on the face
of it.  Like that mission to Mars a dozen years or so ago where the
scientists had mixed up English measures with metric and plowed the
little vessel right into the surface of the planet at speed because the
calculations had been so basic nobody had even thought about them.

Overlooking something as simple as a security guard's log was the kind
of thing a scientist just might do because it would never occur to him.
A mistake so basic he never even thought about it.

If Jay was right about the technology and the possibility of using it
in such a manner, then Morrison had had the means and opportunity, but
what had the motive been?

"Any leads on where he went?"  Howard asked.

"Not yet.  The mainline ops are on the case, and we've got bulletins
out to every state police agency in the U.S., as well as to the
Canadian authorities.  Flight plans in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest
are all being checked."

"I'm going to be out of here in a day or so," Howard said.

"I'll get to the office--" "You will go home.  General.  We will run
this guy down doing the things we know how to do.  What we haven't done
enough of lately--computer detection."

"I'll be okay to work."

"Not according to your wife you won't.  We'll keep you posted as to
progress."

Howard wasn't happy with that, but there wasn't much he could do about
it.  They said their goodbyes.

Michaels headed to Jay's office.  He tapped on the door and stuck his
head into the room.  Gridley was offline.

"Hey, Boss."

"I just got off the com with John Howard.  He is going to be okay, so
the doctors tell him."

Jay relaxed a little.

"Good to hear it."

"I trust you are well on the way to catching the man responsible for
shooting our teammate?"

Jay smiled.

"Oh, sure.  Well on the way."

"Which means?"

"We've got all his personal records.  We know where he's been and what
he's done that required use of his credit cards, or his driver's
license.  We have his work records, too, but there are some gaps.  He
took out a second mortgage on his house and cleaned out his bank
accounts, so he has a big chunk of cash, and not everybody requires ID
for every transaction.  He could have bought a cheap car, rented a
private plane, maybe even gotten himself some phony ID for whatever.

"We have a description of the guy who was with Morrison from the guards
at HAARP, but 'your average-looking science geek' isn't a lot of help.
No surveillance cameras managed to catch an image of "Dick Grayson,"
and it was ole Dick who must have done the shooting-unless Morrison has
a stash of guns we don't know about and also practiced his fast draw
without anybody we talked to knowing about it."

Jay smiled.

"Hey, you know who Dick Grayson is?"

"Robin, the boy wonder," Michaels said.

Jay looked disappointed, but he continued: "FBI field agents have
questioned Morrison's wife, and she doesn't know anything.  Really.
According to the reports I just read, she isn't exactly the brightest
bulb on the string-she doesn't know what her husband does for a living,
and it is the opinion of the interviewing agents that she wouldn't know
HAARP from a harpoon."

"What else?"

"Nothing else.  We have a respected scientist who apparently figured
out how to drive people crazy using a giant walkie-talkie, then up and
did it.  We know when, and we think we sort of know generally how, but
not why."

"Conjecture?"

"I dunno.  Boss.  Doesn't make any sense to me.   E

revenge, power, money--those are the big motivating factors that come
to mind."

Michaels said, "Anybody ever screw him over so bad he'd want this kind
of revenge?"

"Not that I've seen.  His ex-wife lives in Boston.  If he wanted to get
her, he missed by three thousand miles.  No alimony, no kids, and the
new trophy wife is a lot prettier, anyhow.  He lost his funding on a
research project, but got a higher paying job right after.  "
"Power?"

"Never had an ambition to run things, far as I can tell."

"Money, then?"

"How does zapping a couple of Chinese villages and then downtown
Portland get him rich?  Extortion, maybe?

But that wouldn't be too bright, 'cause he'd have to know the
authorities would be on his tail forever for multiple murder.  He'd
never be able to relax, it's too high-profile.

Too late for that now, anyhow, we have the gun.  Ammunition is no good
without it, and he can't walk into another of these radio palaces and
ask pretty please to use the transmitter, can he?"

No, it didn't make a lot of sense.

Michaels had a sudden thought.

"Suppose you wanted to buy a new computer system, something
experimental, way ahead of what everybody else had?"

"Yeah?"

"How would you go about buying it if you weren't sure what it would
do?"

"Sit down and put it through its paces," Jay said.

"Crank it up to high and let it fly, find out what it would do--ah."

Michaels saw that Jay was going down the same path.

"Yeah," he said.

"Maybe that's what Morrison was doing.

Maybe he was showing it to a potential customer.  How much you figure
such a thing might be worth, to the right customer?  The power to drive
your enemies bonkers?"

"Damn," Jay said.

"Yeah.  I think we just might have found ourselves an even uglier can
of worms.  As long as it is Morrison, we get him eventually.  But what
if he passes it along to somebody else?  Somebody we can't get so
easily?"

"That could be a problem."

-"It already is a problem.  Ours.  As of now, this is your reason for
living.  Hit the net.  Get all the help you can get.

Find this guy.  Jay.  And find him fast."

"Yeah."

Michaels looked around.

"You seen Toni?  I kind of lost track of her around lunchtime."

"Uh, no.  I haven't, uh, seen her."  He looked back at his computer.

Michaels said, "I'm hoping to get her to come back to work.  I think
she's considering it seriously."

"Really.  That's, uh, good.  Boss."  Something on Jay's desk suddenly
seemed fascinating to him.  And something in his tone of voice didn't
sound quite right.

"What?"  Michaels said.

"What, 'what'?"  Jay responded, still not looking up.

Michaels realized he was maybe not the most perceptive man in the world
when it came to reading people, but Jay Gridley wasn't one of the
world's great adepts when it came to hiding his feelings, either.

"You aren't telling me something I need to hear."

"Boss, I--" "I have a lot on my mind right now.  Jay.  How about you
don't add worrying the unknown to it?"

Jay blew out a sigh.

"All right.  Last time I was in the feeb mainframe, I left myself a
couple of doors, you know, just in case we had problems like when the
Russian got into the government systems?"

"Skip the rationalizations, you're a hacker to the bone.

It's what we pay you for, remember."

"Yeah, well, I kind of left myself a door in the director's office
subsystem."

"And you found something J need to know but that you don't want to tell
me.  What--am I going to get fired?"

"No, no, nothing like that.  It's just that, well, Toni had a meeting
with the director today.  At one."

Michaels's immediate urge was to cover and say.  Oh, sure, I knew about
that.  But since he hadn't known, and since there seemed to be more, he
didn't say that.  Instead, he said, "And now you can drop the other
shoe."

"You really ought to hear it from her.  Boss."

"Maybe so, but I'm going to hear it from you."

Jay shook his head.

"The director just put in the e-forms for a new staff job in her
office.  Special assistant.  She was offering the job to Toni."

Michaels blinked.

"And she took the job?"

"Not that I can tell."

Michaels felt an absurd sense of relief.  A job offer, fine, that was
no big deal.  Sure, she should have told him about it, but, hey, things
were busy, and maybe she'd planned to brush the director off before she
mentioned it.  That would be like her.  Nothing to worry about.

Yeah?  Then why is your stomach suddenly all twisted and cold?

Anchorage, Alaska

When he used his phone to check his e-mail, Tyrone Howard saw a
priority call from Jay Gridley.  Huh.  What was that about?

It took forever to scroll the message on the tiny screen, but it was
pretty straightforward.  Jay had put out a call to all his contacts on
the web.  He was looking for some information, and he was asking for
help.

Tyrone stared at the phone.  What seemed like a thousand years ago, he
had helped Jay chase down a bad guy in VR.  He and Jay knew each other
from way back, ever since Tyrone's dad had been at Net Force.  Of
course, that time he'd helped Jay had been when he was spending six or
seven hours a day jacked in to his computer, something he hadn't done
in a while.  These days, he was on-line two hours a day, tops, almost
nothing, just enough time to read his mail, run through a few VR rooms,
and maybe a few minutes of an on-line game.  But if Jay was asking,
Tyrone bet it had something to do with his dad getting shot, and he was
ready to sit down, plug in, and get the data flowin' fine and fast for
that.  This was the guy who had pack-pronged Portland, killed people,
and ruined the championships, too.  A drag foot juice sucker who needed
to be shorted out, no feek.  He had his laptop with him, in his pack in
his dad's room.  He'd get it and get online.

Nadine could help him.  She didn't know a whole lot about computers,
but he could take her along and show her as they went.  He was not as
sharp as he'd been, but he could still lube foot the net okay.  He'd
help Jay and they would catch the sucker who had shot his dad.

Tuesday, June 14th Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Inside the car, even with the motor running and the air conditioner
going on high, it was warm.  It was just the two of them, Morrison in
the back, Ventura driving.  They passed the odd militiaman on the dusty
gravel road as they crept along at just over walking speed.

Over the phone, Wu's voice was silky, relaxed, lulling.

He said, "Of course we trust you.  It's just that some of your... ah
... associates seem to have a bias against people of our ...
persuasion.  No point in tempting fate, now, is there?"

Morrison nodded at the unseen speaker.  Both phones had their picture
transmission off, so neither man could view the other.  Not that it
would have helped Morrison much to see Wu.  He wasn't particularly good
at reading expressions on Western faces; as far as he was concerned,

the Chinese were inscrutable.  Besides, it didn't matter.

Ventura had coached him, and so far, everything the bodyguard had said
was right on the button.  In theory, their conversation was scrambled,
encoded so that it couldn't be understood even if somebody was able to
intercept and record it.

"Perhaps the Chinese embassy might be more to your liking?"

Wu had the grace to laugh.

"Well, of course, we could arrange that, but somehow I don't think
Luther would feel very comfortable under such circumstances.  In his
place, I would not."

"Let's cut to the chase," Morrison said.

"I'll name a place, and we'll meet there."

Ventura had told him they wouldn't like that, getting right to the
point.  The culture from which Wu came was more patient than America's,
by and large, and the Chinese were willing to engage in as much
ceremonial talk as necessary to please all the speakers.  They viewed
Americans' lack of formality and impatience as signs of youth and poor
breeding.

"Let them think what they want," Ventura had told him.

"The lower an opinion they have of us, the better."

"Perhaps," Wu said.

"Where?"

Morrison glanced ahead at Ventura, who saw him in the rearview mirror.
He nodded.

"There's a theater in Woodland Hills, California.  That's just outside
Los Angeles."

"I know where Woodland Hills is.  Doctor."  His voice was dry, and no
overt anger came through, but Morrison smiled.  Ventura had told him
that would irritate Wu, too.

Morrison continued: "The theater is fairly new, an IMAX.  It's on the
edge of a big shopping center--"

"Ah, yes, on Mulholland, just north of Oxnard," Wu broke in.

"I saw the latest James Bond picture there a few months ago.  You take
the Ventura Freeway."

Again Morrison smiled.

"He'll one-up you," Ventura had said.

"But it'll be subtle."

"Good, that'll save me having to give directions.  Tomorrow at noon."

"Any particular reason for this meeting place?"

"I haven't seen the picture they're showing."

"I see.  All right.  But there are a few details to which we must
attend."

"Such as?"

"Well, you can hardly expect us to show up hauling a suitcase with four
hundred million dollars in small bills, now can you?  It would take a
truck to carry that much."

"I have a secure account in an island bank," Morrison said.

"Electronic transfer will do.  Bring a laptop with a secure wireless
modem."

"Ah, but there is the rub.  You expect us to deliver that much money to
you, and then you will give us the information, is that correct?"

"I'm the only one who can.  It isn't written down anywhere."

His meaning here was clear enough: If something happens to me before
you get what you want, you won't get it.  The truth was something else:
He did have a copy of it--but only one.  Any other references to the
sequence had been erased, and he'd done that using a deletion program
that made all those files unrecoverable.  The remaining file was well
hidden, too.  Nobody would ever find it.

He could not imagine forgetting the sequence, but if for some reason he
did, he wouldn't lose it.

That's what you thought about the feds connecting you to all this, too,
remember?

He tried to ignore the thought.  He still couldn't figure out how they
had done that.  He had been so careful.

"How do we know you will deliver?"

"You know I have the information.  I've demonstrated it to your
satisfaction, haven't I?  Once I have the money, why wouldn't I?  It
doesn't make any sense not to, does it?"

"Having it and giving it to us are not exactly the same though, are
they?"

"I'll be sitting right there next to you.  You transfer the money.  ,1
transfer the information.  I assume you will have scientists standing
by who can verify the information.  I can give you the names of some of
yours who have the ability to confirm it--Dr.  Jang Ji, or George Chen,
or Li Hun--" "That won't be necessary.  We know who our scientists are.
But can they verify it immediately?"

"If they have a test subject and access to ECG equipment and a couple
of basic transmitters, they can be ready to run the experiment as soon
as they get the code sequence.

They'll be able to confirm it before the movie is over.  Only on a
small scale, of course, but in this case, size doesn't matter.  It will
work as well in the field as it does in the lab--you've seen that."

There was a short pause as Wu apparently digested this information.

"That's the deal, Mr.  Wu.  Take it or leave it."

"All right.  I'll see you at noon tomorrow.  Have a pleasant trip."

Wu disconnected, and Morrison blew out a big sigh of relief.  This had
all gone a lot more crossways than he had ever anticipated.  A large
part of him wished he could turn back the clock and reconsider this
whole idea.

"He went for it," Ventura said.  Not a question.

"Yes."

"Good.  We're in business."

Morrison was worried.

"This sounds very risky to me.

A public movie theater?  It will be too easy for him to bring men with
guns in and hide them among the audience.

He could have fifteen or twenty of them and we wouldn't know it."

Ventura smiled into the rearview mirror.

"Do I tell you how to program your signals?  Offer advice on
frequencies?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--" "Don't worry, we'll know who they are.
The theater will be having a special screening tomorrow at noon, for
screenwriters, members of the WGA.  They'll have to show a card to get
in the showing.  Everybody else will either be one of ours or belong to
the Chinese.  We'll let their people in, because we will have the
advantage.  The employees, from the booth to the concession stand to
the guy who tears your ticket in half, will be our people.  For every
one they get inside, we'll have one in a nearby seat covering them.
Everybody our men don't know will be a potential target.  If click
comes to bang, they will know who to shoot.  And if they miss?  Well,
nobody will notice if there are a few less screenwriters anyhow.
Everybody in L.A. is working on a script."

"How can you do this?  You know the guy who owns the place?"

"I am the guy who owns the place.  Over the years, I've done pretty
well for my retirement.  Doctor.  I own that theater, a bar, part
interest in a health club, and a couple of high-profile restaurants.
Plus the blue chip stocks and bonds, of course.  I'm not in the same
class as you are about to be, but I could live fairly comfortably off
the investments and interest without ever touching my principal.

If your money isn't working for you, it's just gathering dust."  He
smiled.

Morrison shook his head.  This was incredible.  Why would a man of
wealth and property risk his life to work as a bodyguard^!

, Ventura must have read his mind.  "

"Idle hands are the Devil's workshop."  A man likes to keep busy doing
work he enjoys."

Morrison looked away from Ventura.

This was getting stranger--and more frightening--all the time.

Washington, D.C.

Michaels sat at his kitchen table, holding a cup of coffee.

It was early, just about dawn, and Toni was still asleep.

He drank and stared at the wall, his gaze going through the paneling
and Sheetrock and wood and focusing on nothing a thousand miles away.

And how is your life, Mr.  Michaels?

Why, just fine, thank you very much.  My ex-wife is getting remarried
to some Idaho dork and taking my child away from me--unless I want to
get into an ugly child custody case that will probably scar my daughter
for life, something she doesn't deserve and I won't do.

I personally spoke to the man who almost certainly killed scores of
Chinese by using some kind of radio beam to drive them crazy, and if I
had been on the fucking ball, I would have stopped him before he did it
again to scores of Americans.  He walked into my office and I smiled
and let him walk out.

The head of my military arm was shot and seriously wounded because I
wanted him to go along and keep the federal marshals company, and the
guy I sent them all after plugged a marshal while he was at it, got
away, and is still on the loose.

My boss is ready to nail my ass to the nearest wall for not keeping her
in the loop.

What else?  Oh, right.  My woman is back and sleeping in my bed, but
she's considering taking a job where she'll be looking over my shoulder
at my work and then telling my boss all about it.  And she didn't think
it was worth mentioning.

He had come home late, Toni had already been asleep, and he'd stewed
about this particular problem until he conked out.  And he woke up
thinking about it.

That it?

Yeah, I think that just about covers it.  My life is just swell.

He sipped at the coffee.  It was cold.  He considered getting up to
warm it, but it wasn't worth the effort.  Sitting and staring at the
wall was ever so much more important.

Sure, sitting and whining about how hard your life is, that's the way
to go, all right.

"Up yours!"

"Hey.  What did I do?"

Michaels looked up.  He hadn't realized he'd said it aloud until he
heard Toni.  She stood there, wearing one of his dress shirts and
nothing else, and she looked  3

absolutely gorgeous, even though her face was sleep-wrinkled and her
hair was a tangled rat's nest.  That didn't help, that she was
beautiful and he loved her.  He'd thought things were okay when she
came back, he'd thought all was right with the world.

Well, think again, pal.

"Nothing, I was just talking to myself."

She took a mug from the dishwasher and poured coffee into it.  She
inhaled the vapor, blew it out, then drank.  She turned and leaned
against the counter, looked at him.

"You want to talk about it?"

Did he want to talk about it?  Goddamned right he wanted to talk about
it.  They could start with How come you didn't tell me you'd been to
see the director to discuss going to work for her?  Slip your mind? Not
important enough to even mention?  Don't want to let me in on little
details in your life, like where you are going to work?

But he didn't say that.  Instead, he said, "Not really."

She took another sip of the brew.

"Okay."

Fine.  Fine.  If she wasn't going to bring it up, he would rot in hell
for all eternity before he brought it up!

He said, "I need to go in early.  I'm having a meeting with the
mainline SAC to coordinate our investigation to find Morrison."

"Want me to ride along?"

"Suit yourself."  That came out a little snippier than he wanted, but
what the hell, it was how he felt.

She blew out a sigh, then put the coffee mug down on the counter and
crossed her arms.

"All right.  What's eating you?  You're so pissed off you're about to
spit.  Did I do something wrong?"

"Wrong?  No, you didn't do anything wrong."  He could feel the acid
drip from his voice, feel the rage just barely buried under his
words.

"So why are you taking my head off?"

He was not going to say it, he was not going to say it!

"No reason.  I was just wondering, since you are always hammering at me
for keeping to myself, not telling you what is going on inside my head,
I was just wondering why you didn't tell me you were considering going
to work for Melissa Allison, that's all."

Well.  So much for his burn-in-hell resolve not to mention it.

She unfolded her arms, put one hand to her mouth, and she had, by God,
the grace to at least look guilty.  She said, "I... I'm sorry.  I was
going to tell you."

"When?  When I saw them painting your name on your new parking
space?"

"Alex--" "No, no, you don't have to explain.  You can do what you want,
I don't have any strings on you.  You want to work for the folks on the
other side of the compound, hey, it's not my business.  You are going
to take the job, right?"

Her arms came back up and she crossed them tightly in front of her
breasts.  She stared back at him.

"Yes.  I am."

His gut twisted.  Well.  There you go.  Signed, sealed, delivered.

He stood.

"Congratulations.  I'm so glad we had a chance to discuss it before you
made your decision."  He stalked past her toward the bedroom.  Probably
not as impressive as it might have been, since he was wearing nothing
but his old ratty bathrobe with the frayed cuffs and torn shoulder.

"Don't do this, Alex!  Don't shut down on me!"

"You have no room to say that right now," he said.

"No room at all.  I'm going to work."

"If you do, I won't be here when you get back!"

"Fine, you're going to do what you want anyhow-why bother to tell
me!"

And that pretty much ended that conversation.

 Wednesday, June 15th Washington, D.C.

In the cab on the way to the rental car place, Toni fumed.

Why did Alex have to be such a horse's ass?

All right, yes, she should have told him about the job interview, and
that she was seriously considering taking the offer.  But, really, when
did she have the chance?  After she had seen the director, Alex had
been out of his office and busy.  He hadn't come back to his condo
until late, and she'd been in bed.  The first time she could have
reasonably brought it up was this morning, and before she had a chance
to say anything, he'd jumped down her throat.  How fair was that?

Uh-huh.  You can make the case that way to him if you want, but let's
not bullshit ourselves, okay?  You could have mentioned it before you
went to the meeting.  And you were only pretending to be asleep when
Alex got home because you didn't want to talk about it.  Try again.

All right, yes, yes, it was true.  But even so, he still didn't have
any right to blow up like that.  He wasn't her father!

No, but he's the man you love.  And he was right about one thing--you
did to him what you absolutely hate to see him do to you--you kept him
in the dark about what was going on inside your head.  And all that
business about you not being there when he got home?  What was that?

Toni sighed.  She hated these arguments with her inner self.  She
always lost.  She could rationalize to somebody else, but she couldn't
fool herself--not for long, anyhow.

Alex's anger had ignited her own, and when they'd both had a chance to
cool down, they'd be able to discuss things more rationally.  He did
love her, she knew that, and just because they'd had a fight didn't
mean all was lost forever.  She hadn't had much practice at that,
fighting with somebody you loved, and every time it happened, she had a
belly-twisting fear that it would be the end.  One cross word, blap!
they'd go their separate ways.  Maybe you got over that, in time.  She
hoped so.

All right.  So now the question was.  Should she wait and hash this out
with Alex?  Or should she go to Quantico, see the director, and tell
her she was going to take the job?  Her ego said to hell with him, do
what you want.

But her heart said she should at least sit down and explain to him why
she wanted to do it.  Okay, so he was pissed off at her, he was busy,
and he had a lot on his mind, but they could find a few minutes to work
this out.  This was more important than anything else in her life, she
couldn't just turn and walk away from it.

"Here we are, lady," the cabbie said.

Toni blinked.  The trip had been a blur, she couldn't remember any of
it.

"Thanks," she said.

Her mind was set.  She would get the rental car, drive to the office,
and find a time and space to talk to Alex.

She could make him understand.  She knew she could.

New York City

The bar was a rat hole--shoot, a self-respecting rat would think twice
about sticking its nose in here, and if it had two neurons to spark at
each other, it would decide not to risk it.  The lighting was
mercifully dim, but you could still see the knife scars in the wooden
bar, the initials carved in the tables and stools.  There were flats
and holographs on the walls lit by neon beer signs, the posters of
mostly naked women perched in various poses on Harley Davidson
motorcycles.  On a couple of the pictures, certain portions of the
women's anatomy had been worn through to the dark wall underneath,
caused by somebody rubbing or kissing the images.  The mirror behind
the bar was cracked in two places, held together with glass-mend
strips, and few of the liquor bottles on the shelves behind the
bartender were more than half-full.

The bartender was six and a half feet tall, probably weighed three
hundred pounds, and he wore a leather vest and oil-stained jeans that
presumably went to the tops of his big old motorcycle boots.  He had
tattoos all over what was visible of his body, everything from Li'l Hot
Stuff to naked women with large breasts--and large fangs.  The
centerpiece was a Harley logo on his chest, partially obscured with
thick patches of graying hair.

Lined up at the bar and seated at the tables were other bikers, men and
women, and none of them looking what you would call... wholesome ... On
a raised platform off to one side of the bar, red and blue lights
played over a listless dancer.  She was naked, save for several rings
piercing various body parts, and a few small but interesting tattoos of
her own, including a -flame-colored one shaped like an arrow that
pointed at one of the more intimate piercings--or what was being
pierced.  The music was some bump-and-grind number with saxophones and
a lot of drums, and the dancer could have phoned in her performance.
From her face, one could see the dancer was well past her prime; from
stretch marks and scars, one could guess that she'd had children,
cosmetic surgery, and probably an appendectomy.  The overall effect was
as erotic as a chunk of concrete, and nobody was watching the woman
dance.

Jay Gridley, wearing a sleeveless blue denim jacket sporting colors
from the Thai Tigers Motorcycle Club-TTMC superimposed over a growling
tiger's face--stood between two bruisers a foot taller than he and
probably half again his weight.

One of the bruisers accidentally tapped Jay with his elbow as he turned
to speak to a mama on the other side of him.

"Watch it," Jay said.

The biker turned back to Jay, death in his eyes, but when he saw Jay,
he blinked and said, "Sorry, man."

Jan grinned.  Well, what the hell, it was his scenario, wasn't it?  If
he was gonna be in a bad biker titty bar, he might as well be the
baddest guy in the place, right?  Jay knew he had the moves to wipe up
the virtual floor with anybody in the place, and even in VR, people
could sense a real expert from his moves and stance.

It probably said something about his fantasy life that he would come up
with such a scenario, and was able to flesh it out as well as he had,
but hey, if you can't have fan, what is the point?

The bartender came over, and Jay pointed at his empty glass.  The giant
nodded, reached behind himself, and pulled a bottle of tequila off the
shelf.  When he poured, the worm sloshed into the glass with the fiery
liquid.  He looked at Jay.

Jay shrugged.

"Leave it.  It adds texture."

The bartender started to turn away.  Jay said, "I'm looking for
somebody."

"Yeah?"  He locked gazes with Jay.

"Yeah.  A shooter."  He pulled the smudged drawing from his jacket
pocket.  This was the composite put together by the computer artist,
based on the HAARP guards' description of "Dick Grayson."

The bartender never took his gaze from Jay's.

"Don't know him, ain't seen him' he said.

"Look at the picture."

"Don't need to.  Won't matter."

"So that's how it is."

"Yeah.  That's how it is."

Jay grabbed the bartender by a clump of chest hair and jerked him
against the edge of the bar.  With his free hand, he pulled an
automatic knife with a five-inch blade from his jeans.  He put the
point against the bartender's throat, just under his chin.

In the real world.  Jay had grabbed the home address of the guy playing
bartender and force-fed the generating computer a virus-laced cookie.
If he didn't pull the knife away, the guy's system was going to go
belly up in about ten seconds after he "cut" him.

"Look at the picture or I give you a new smile."

The bar patrons hadn't noticed the action, save for those closest to
Jay, and they quickly edged away.  The dancer continued her
sleepwalking shuffle.

"Okay, don't get twitchy."  The bartender glanced down at the image.

Jay grinned.  This visit to a mercenary chat room on VR was a lot more
interesting than running facial points of comparison against the image
files of the NCIC, NAPC, or the FBI, looking for a match--which he had
already done, and come up with zed-edwardro geroliver.

"Jeez," somebody said from the doorway.

"Jay?"

The voice sounded familiar.  Jay released the bartender and turned.

Tyrone Howard stood there, looking around the inside of the biker's
hangout.

"Tyrone?  What are you doing here?"

There were a few people to whom Jay had given his forwarding code, so
that if they needed to contact him electronically, they could in
essence meet him on the net wherever he was.  It wouldn't work in a
high-classification security area, but any hacker worth three bytes
could follow the line into anything as simple as this kind of public
access site if Jay allowed him past the fire wall.  Tyrone Howard had
been very helpful during the mad Russian thing a few months back, and
Jay had added him to the list of people who could contact him in a
hurry.

Might have been a mistake, considering the overlay.

Apparently Tyrone had decided to let Jay's scenario be the default, and
it wasn't one you particularly wanted to have a thirteen-year-old boy
see you in.  He might get the wrong idea.

"Yeah, I seen him," the bartender said.

Jay turned back to the giant biker, breaking character:

"Really?"

"Yeah.  He's been in once or twice."

"Where can I find him?"

"I dunno.  But the guy over by the pool table, the one in the Army
shirt, drinking boilermakers, he's had some dealings with him."

Jay nodded.

Tyrone walked into the place toward Jay.

"Gimme a second here, Ty, I'll be right with you."

"No hurry.  Jay.  I'll just... enjoy the ambience.  Jeez, this is as
bad as Jimmy-Joe's strip joint."

Great.  All he needed was Tyrone telling his father about this
scenario.

Worry about that later.  Jay.  Let's go see the man who likes
boilermakers.

But the man who enjoyed dropping a shot glass of whiskey into his beer
stein, depth-charge style, wasn't really there--he was a proxy.

While it was true that none of the people in the ersatz biker bar were
really "there," some were less so than others.

A proxy was a shell, little more than a link to another location,
something to mark a place, and not somebody you could interface with
directly.  A ghost of a shadow.

Jay was able to get a location, but a quick pulse in that direction did
a re verb with nothing more than an RW street address, somewhere in the
District.  Apparently Mr.

Boilennaker here didn't like to reveal too much on the net, and if Jay
wanted to speak with him, he was going to have to drop out of VR and
go

RW.

Huh.  Who did that anymore?

He wasn't a field op, he was a net jet so he could pass this along to
one of the staff investigators to have them look up Boilermaker here
and have a face-to-face chat with him.

Jay shook his head.  That might take days, given the way the field ops
took their sweet time about such requests.

Even if the boss put a rush on it.  Jay didn't altogether trust the
shoe skidders--some of them weren't particularly sharp, and it would be
his luck to get a dull one who'd mess up the interview.

Soji had been after him to get out more.  No reason why he couldn't
drop by and do the interview himself, was there?  It wasn't as if he
was afraid of going outside.

He looked around for Tyrone, but the boy had vanished.

"Tyrone?"

A biker with the physique of a competition bodybuilder whose monthly
steroid bill was higher than his house note smiled at him.

"Hey, Jay."

"Nice suit," Jay said, waving at the mound of muscle.

"I thought it was a good idea.  It's a modified pro wrestler, all I had
to do was change the clothes and add a couple of tattoos.  I didn't
want to stand out."

"Come on, let's leave this pit.  I've got a private room."

He rattled off the password and headed for the door.

As he reached the exit, the exotic dancer's music changed, and the
first notes of Destroyers' version of "Bad to the Bone" rumbled its
bass beat from the speakers.  Jay grinned.  For a second, he'd
forgotten he'd programmed that in.  Yep, that's me.  Jay Gridley,
better not step into my path, 'cause I'm bb-b-b-bad!

 Wednesday, June 15th Woodland Hills, California

Ventura wiped a thin film of sweat from his forehead as he stood
outside the theater, smiling into the parking lot.

It was probably almost eighty degrees, and it was not yet nine a.m.
Hardly a surprise that the sun came up bright and hot here this time of
year.  The Los Angeles basin pretty much had two seasons--hot and real
hot.  Ventura could remember going to the beach in January, and getting
sunburned lying on the sand, watching girls hip-roll past in bikinis.
He grinned again.  That had been a long time ago.

He and Morrison had been here for almost two hours, and of course his
people had been in place since before Wu had called yesterday.  The
regular staff had been given three days off with pay and told that a
special training session for employees of a different theater was being
conducted.  If anybody had wondered about it, the free days off were
apparently enough to keep them from asking.

Wu would expect Ventura to get there early, of course, and he wouldn't
know who normally worked there, but he'd figure Ventura hadn't chosen
the place because he liked breathing hot smog.

Like a game of chess or go, any move in this level of play, no matter
how innocuous it might seem, could have a^major impact later on.  You
had to be very careful, always looking ahead.

Only a fool would choose a neutral meeting place if he could pick one
that would tilt the playing field in his favor.

Taking the high ground was an old and battle-tested adage.  The Chinese
knew this--their culture had been steeped in war for thousands of
years, and it made for a pungent, bitter drink.  They knew this brew.

Within three hours of the call, Chinese agents had put the theater
under surveillance, and a couple of them had tried to con their way
inside.  Ventura's people had kept the place secure, though they really
couldn't do anything about the watchers outside.  Well.  That didn't
matter.

The arrival of an ostentatious stretch limo in the front two hours ago
had likely drawn most of the outside attention while Morrison and
Ventura slipped in the back door, bracketed by four of his best
shooters.  The guy having coffee in the Starbucks all morning would
have seen them and reported it, but Wu wouldn't want to risk a
shoot-out in broad daylight next to a major street--it would be too
easy for Morrison to take a round, and nobody wanted that.  Yet.

Once inside, Morrison felt a lot safer, and Ventura let him believe
that, though the truth was, it didn't much matter.  If Ventura screwed
up, the client was in deep shit no matter where he was.

Still, Ventura knew they had the advantages: He had chosen the time and
place, he controlled the building, and they needed Morrison alive,
whereas Ventura could pot anybody on their side he wanted.  And when it
got right down to it, he was pretty sure he was better at strategy and
tactics than Chilly Wu.

Of course, that was the crux of it--"pretty sure" was not the same as
"absolutely certain," which you could never be in such an encounter.
And in that was the secret shared by serious martial artists
everywhere.  If you were a warrior--a real warrior--there was only one
way to test yourself.  You had to go into battle, guns ready, and face
the enemy.  No amount of virtual reality, no practice with targeting
lasers against others, nothing other than the real thing mattered.  In
the end, the only way to know you were better when it came to life and
death was to pull the triggers, rock and roll, and see who walked away
when the smoke cleared.

That instant of truth, when the guns and knives came out, that was as
much in the moment as a man got.  That was the ultimate realization
that you were alive, when you stared laughing Death in the face and
backed him down.

Death always laughed, of course, because he knew that in the end, he
always won.  That was Death--but life wasn't about the destination, it
was about the trek.  Playing the song was about the flow of the music,
not about reaching the end.

If a man spent years, decades, perfecting a skill, no matter how awful
the skill was in application, some part of him wanted to test it.  To
know.

So, part of this was protecting his client.  And part of it was, if
necessary, defeating the one who would harm his client.  You stepped up
and knocked the other guy's dick into the dirt, and thus you knew that
in this instance, however briefly the moment lasted, you were better
than he was.

It was not the best measure of a man, to pit yourself against another,
but it was a method that gave at least a partial answer right then and
there.

Ego, and no way around that, but Ventura had come to terms with his ego
a long time ago.  Yes, he had to accept that there were likely better
assassins out there now than he was--younger, stronger, faster.  And
while old and devious beat young and strong most of the time, that
didn't happen when it was quicker reaction time that made the crucial
difference.

So, yes, there were better assassins, but he was pretty sure that
Chilly Wu wasn't one of them.  If the deal went smoothly, well and
good, but if things went sour, well, then they'd see.

They'd dance the dance, and then they'd know for sure.

Ventura looked around the parking lot, which was still mostly empty.
The first showing in the theater was usually noon or later; most of the
stores in the shopping center didn't open until nine or nine-thirty, so
the sub rosa ops fielded by the Chinese had to work a little to hide.
In the parking lot of the mall, broadside to the theater, there was a
supposedly empty delivery van purporting to be from a carpet store, but
Ventura would bet rubies to red rust that somebody was hidden in the
back watching every move he made.  Maybe through rifle sights, though
he didn't think they'd shoot him.

Another smile.  During the American Revolution, there had been a
British sniper, a crack shot, who had once lined his rifle sights up on
George Washington.  From the reports, it would have been an easy shot,
but the sniper hadn't taken it.  Washington had been standing with his
back to the shooter, and a true British gentleman wouldn't shoot an
officer in the back, now would he?  Could have changed the whole course
of the war, that one shot un-taken, but that wasn't the issue.  There
were rules, after all.  Otherwise, what was the point?

A public works-type truck was parked next to a manhole cover nearby,
orange rubber cones and blinking lights blocking the area, with three
men in hard hats industriously pretending to be working on something
down under the street.

A telephone truck was backed up to a junction box across the street at
the pizza place.

There were also joggers, dog walkers, women pushing baby carriages,
bicyclists, and little old ladies in tennis shoes strolling to the
stores for their daily mall walks.

Ventura figured that any or all of them could be other than what they
seemed.  Probably some of them were legit, but he couldn't make that
assumption about any particular one--that kind of thinking got you
killed.  That old lady might be a kung fu expert; and instead of little
Mac, that baby carriage might hold little Mac-10.  If you were prepared
for the worst, then anything less was a gift.

He smiled as he headed back toward the theater.  He liked films, but he
had always found those movies hilarious where the bad-guy kidnappers or
extortionists showed up to collect their money and never looked twice
at the wino on the park bench, or the young couple holding hands, or
the priest feeding the pigeons, all of whom might as well have had big
flashing neon signs on them saying "Cop!"  Crooks who were that stupid
deserved to get shot--it was good for the gene pool.

Of course, good people were always hard to find, in most any line of
work.  Ventura himself had only a dozen pros he'd personally let watch
his back when the bullets started to fly, and it had taken twenty-odd
years to find that many he trusted.  They all worked for him on and
off.

There were another twenty or thirty second-tier shooters who could do
things like the theater setup today, who would follow instructions and
hit their marks if push came to shoot.  Past that?  Well, most of the
people he'd met who played at being soldiers of fortune or freelance
bodyguards or hitters were okay at best, coffin fodder at worst.

He figured the Chinese would send the sharpest they could round up on
short notice to play here today, but how many they could get inside was
tricky.  Too few and they wouldn't feel covered properly; too many, and
it would alert anybody half-awake.  If he had to trade places with
Chilly Wu, he'd be a little concerned about that.

Morrison stood by the concession stand, nervously sucking on a straw
stuck in a cup of tizzy orange drink.

He's going to ask me if everything is okay, Ventura thought.

"Everything okay?"

Ventura smiled.

"Under control."

"I'm worried about this screenwriter business," Morrison said.

"Aren't you concerned that the Chinese might know about it, slip some
ringers in?"

"Not really.  The op in the ticket booth is checking membership cards.
He'll scan those into our systems.  I have a man in the manager's
office with links to the WGA database.  He'll match the names on the
cards against a list of members, and the faces on the closed-circuit
se E

circuit security cam in the booth against those in the guild's
database--those are new, the pictures--and also against California
driver's licenses.  Anybody who shows up to sneak in using a friend's
card had better not sneeze at the wrong time."

"You aren't worried at all?  Wouldn't a hidden metal detector or X ray
be wise?"

"No point.  They know we chose this place for a reason, and they know
we're here several hours early.  I figure they'll try to slip a minimum
of eight men in with Wu, a maximum of twelve.  I am assuming they will
all be armed.  I have twenty men on call, but I probably won't use all
of them.  Remember, the idea here is not to get into a shooting match,
but to keep the balance of power even.  It's our place and Wu knows
that.  If he gets his people in, he'll be a lot more comfortable.  If
he couldn't get them in, then it might make him twitchy; and that's not
what we want."

"No?"

"No.  A nervous man might do something rash.  They'll take what you
have for free if they can get it that way, but if they realize they
can't, they'll pay for it.  What we want is a nice smooth negotiation
in which the Chinese get what they want, and you walk away a rich man,
everybody's happy, a nice win-win situation."

"But if they try something--" "--they won't live to regret it.  Doctor.
Then we have to start all over again with a new negotiating team.
Nobody wants that."

But secretly, a small part of Ventura wanted exactly that.

C'mon, Wu.  Show me what you got.  Reach for your pocket--and let's see
who goes home.

 Wednesday, June 15th Quantico, Virginia

Michaels stopped at Jay's office, but didn't see him.  He saw instead
one of the techs.  Ray DeCamp, carrying a stack of hardcopy printouts.
The man always wore thick, round computer glasses while at work, so of
course he had a nickname appropriate to that:

"Hey, Owl.  Jay around?"

"Commander.  Nah, he said he hadda go into town, said he'd be back inna
couple hours."  Owl had a strong Boston accent, so the last word came
out "ow-wuz."

That surprised Michaels.  Jay seldom left during the day for any
reason.  A lot of times, before he'd hooked up with the Buddhist girl
Soji, Gridley would stay in his office for days, sleeping on the couch
and showering in the gym dressing room.  There were jokes that he was a
vampire, that exposure to sunlight would cause him to burst into
flames.  And coming from other ghost-white computer gee ks who spent a
considerable amount of their own time in semidark rooms, that was
saying something.

Oh, well.  Given everything else going on around here lately, Jay
leaving the building during the day was no weirder than the rest of
it.

"Hey, Alex."

He looked up and refocused on Toni.

"Hey," he said.

He repressed a sigh.  He'd flown off the handle this morning.  Sure,
she had provoked him, but he expected better of himself.  A man who
couldn't control his temper was weak--losing it almost always got you
in more trouble than it solved.

"You want to talk to me?"

He nodded.

"Yeah.  Come on, we can go to my office."

"Kind of stuffy there.  How about the gym?"

He had to smile.  His office, his advantage.  The gym was where she was
stronger.  He said, "Why don't we go to the conference room instead?"

She smiled back at him, and he knew she understood what he'd been
thinking.  What they had both been thinking.

God, he loved smart women!

Washington, D.C.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea coming here, Jay thought.

"Here" was a kind of Army-Navy surplus store, though that wasn't
strictly true--there were odds and ends from other branches of military
surplus for sale here, too, including some stuff from what looked like
the Coast

Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the Russian Air Force.

And on one scratched glass counter next to a rack of moldy uniforms
from some unrecognizable African army, there were even Net Force
buttons and insignia.

The whole place had a sour odor, like unwashed cotton socks mixed with
damp wool, and instead of air-conditioning, a pair of large and loud
metal fans mounted on seven-foot-tall posts circulated the too-warm and
fetid air without doing much to cool it, or the people inside.

Some of the patrons looked familiar--maybe Jay had seen their pictures
on the post office's Most Wanted website-and none of them were what you
would call savory.

Still, he was Jay Gridley, a master scenarist.  He'd built uglier
scenarios in VR.

The guy perched on the stool behind the counter next to the old-style
mechanical cash register was the least appetizing character in the
place.  He was fat, bald, and wore an eyepatch made of what looked like
rattlesnake skin over his right eye, and vaguely green Army-style
fatigues that had probably been unwashed since the Spanish American
War.

As Jay watched, a customer who looked old enough to have been a veteran
of that same war shuffled to the register.

The old man was in baggy green parachute pants and a stained and ratty
green T-shirt over untied combat boots, the laces dragging along the
floor.  The man plunked a bayonet onto the counter.

"How much for this here baloney slicer?"  the old man said.  He
cackled, amused at his own poor joke, a laugh that ended in a dry
wheeze.

Jay took a step backward, so he wouldn't have to share too much of the
man's air.  Surely the guy must have something contagious.

"That's for an '03 Springfield," Eyepatch behind the counter said.  His
raspy voice sounded as if it had been pickled in high-proof whiskey,
then left out in the desert to bleach for a few years.

Jay made a mental note of the sound.  He could use it in a scenario.
This whole place was great research; he could get all kinds of material
from it.

Patch picked the bayonet up.  It was rusty, the wood handle cracked and
worn.

"Don't see a lot of these around much anymore."

"I know what it is, sonny.  I just need to know how much it costs."

"I could let it go for ... eighteen."

"What, cents?"

"Dollars."

"Sheeit, sonny, you cain't get ten for it.  Look at it.  It'll take me
a week to scrape the rust of fen it.  And loo kit the handle."

"I can sell you some naval jelly that'll eat the rust right off.  I
might take fifteen."

"Eleven."

"Twelve."

"Now you're talking."

The old man pulled a clump of greasy-looking bills from his voluminous
pants and peeled a dozen ones off a wad that would choke a rhino.

Patch rang the sale up.

"You want a bag for it?"

"No, I'm gonna walk down the streets of D.C. carrying it where the cops
kin see me and shoot me fulla holes.

Yes, I want a bag for it.  I'm gonna track me down a couple of cats
been diggin' in my garbage and give um a new haircut."

Patch pulled a purple plastic bag from under the counter, with the
store's logo printed on the side: "Fiscus Military Supply," it said
under a pair of crossed rifles and stylized lighting bolts.

When the customer shuffled out.  Jay watched to see if he was going to
trip on the untied bootlaces and break his neck, but the old man
achieved the door without incident.

"Old fart couldn't track an elephant herd across a football field
covered with fresh snow.  What can I do for you?"  Patch said.

"You Vince Fiscus?"

"That would be me, yeah.  And who wants to know?"

"I'm Jay Gridley.  I called earlier."  Jay pulled out his Net Force ID
card.

Fiscus took the card and looked at it carefully, turned it over and
examined the back.  The hologram flashed a rainbow reflection under the
overhead lights.

"You want to sell this?  Tell 'em you lost it, they'll give you
another, but I don't have any Net Force ID."  He waved one flaccid arm
to take in the store.

"I don't think so."  He took his ID back.  He wanted to wipe it off,
but thought that might not look too good.

"All right.  What it's about, Mr.  Net Force Agent?"

Jay kind of liked the sound of that.  He tendered the picture of the
mystery man.  He said, "You know this guy?"

Fiscus looked at the picture.  He grinned, showing a gap where a front
eyetooth had once been.

"That's ole KS."  sure I know him."

Jay felt a sudden surge of excitement.  Aha!  Gotcha!

"KS.?"

"Yeah, stands for "Killer Spook."  Ain't seen him in a while.  He never
give me a real name, so I just called him

KS."

"How is it that you know him?"

"Oh, he's been coming around for--must be five, six years now.  We
first did a little business back in, what?

ought-four or ought-five.  Sold him some fourth-gen spook
eyes--starlight scope image intensifiers.  Army Ranger surplus, off an
old SIPEsuit.  He's bought a few things since then, some of it in
person, some of it over the wire.  What are you looking for him for?
He's not into computer stuff."

"I am not at liberty to say," Jay said.

"It concerns an ongoing investigation."

Fiscus shrugged.

"Why "Killer Spook'?"

Fiscus showed the tooth-gap again.

"I asked around, some people I know.  Rumor was, this guy made a living
doing odd jobs for various folks, including a few guvamint ones.  Black
bag ops, wet work stuff you don't want to show up on the books, you
know what I mean?"

This was getting better by the minute.  Colorful ole Vince here was
giving him all kinds of information.  This exterior investigation stuff
was a walk in the park--why did the field ops make it sound so tough?
Must be worried about job security.

"What kind of weapons you guys carrying now?"  Fiscus asked.

"I heard that issue was some kinda pansy stun-gun."

"Kick-tasers," Jay said.  That was true.  Jay did have a compressed-gas
electric dart gun.  His was in a drawer somewhere at home.  Or maybe at
the office--he hadn't seen it in a while.  Since he wasn't a field
agent, he didn't have to qualify with the weapon, and he had only fired
the thing once, a long time ago.  He did all his shooting in VR.

"Now about this KS.  guy," Jay said.

"Where might I find him?"

"Well, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you why you need him again,"
Fiscus said.

"Like I said, I can't tell you that."

"You wanna bet?"  Fiscus raised his whiskey-soaked voice a couple of
notches.

"Vie, Rudy!  C'mere!"

Two fairly young men in green-on-green camouflage shirts and pants
tucked into gleaming combat boots seemed to materialize from nowhere
behind Jay.  The pair of then), were huge, five, maybe six hundred
pounds combined.

Jay had seen enough vids to know he was maybe in a little trouble here.
He was alone, unarmed, and it looked as if he was about to make the
unwilling acquaintance of Vie and Rudy.  Maybe it was time to see if
discretion was indeed the better part of valor.  He smiled nervously
and started to head for the door.

"Whoa, hold up there, Mr.  Net Force Agent."

Jay looked at Fiscus and saw that the man held a big, dark metal
pistol.

"You aren't supposed to have that in the District.  It's illegal."

"Do tell.  Take your hands away from your belt and put them where I can
see them."  He waved the pistol.

Jay had another sudden flash.  The only reason Fiscus had told him any
of this stuff about the man he'd come looking for was because he didn't
expect Jay to be able to act on it--or tell anybody else.

He had seen a lot of vids.

Jay suddenly had a vacuum in his belly that must rival deepest space.
This was not VR.  He couldn't just ax a : command and drop back into
his office.  That gun was real.

He was turned slightly so Fiscus couldn't see his right hip.  He
double-triple-pressed the panic button on his virgil--one-two-three,
one-two-three--then slowly moved his hands away from his body.

"Take it easy," Jay said.

"Let's be reasonable here."

"That's real good, Mr.  Agent.  Now, let's mosey on into the back room,
and have ourselves a little talk, hey?"

Woodland Hills, California

Morrison leaned against the counter in the bathroom, staring at himself
in the mirror.  His face had a psychedelic cast to it--it was as if he
was seeing a stranger.

He washed his hands, bent, and rinsed out his mouth.

He had the little gun in his sport coat pocket, but the small weight of
it bumping against his right hip was not comforting.

He was scared, frightened to the point where all he wanted to do was to
take off at full speed and run until he couldn't keep going.  He wanted
to find a place to hide when he got there and sleep until all this
somehow went away.

He looked at the frightened man in the mirror again.

Running and hiding wouldn't do any good now.  It was too late.  In a
few minutes, an agent for the Chinese would arrive--already some of his
people were probably lined up outside the theater waiting to get
in--and Morrison was going to have to sit and negotiate a deal with the
man who called himself Chilly Wu.

Morrison stood there for what seemed like a long time,

staring into the mirror, but not really seeing himself any longer.

Ventura came around the corner behind him, and Morrison jumped.

"Wu just pulled up.  You ready?"

"I--Yes, as ready as I can be."

"Don't worry.  My man in the projection booth has an Anschutz Biathlon
rifle that will be lined up on the back of Wu's head the second he
takes his seat.  The shooter -can hit a quarter ten for ten at that
distance.  Every one of Wu's people will have somebody watching him. We
have this covered."

Despite just washing out his mouth, it was dry again.

"Listen," he said, "there's something I want you to know.

I have a hidden copy of the data.  If something happens to me, I want
you to have it.  Sell it, give it away, whatever you want, I don't
care, but--sell it to anybody but the Chinese."

"Nothing is going to happen to you."

"I believe you.  But just in case.  This is the only original research
I've ever done that amounted to anything.  It's important work.  I
don't want to see it lost."

"If it makes you feel better, fine.  I'll see that it gets to a good
home."

"It's not here," he said.

"The copy."

"All right.  Where is it?"

Morrison told him.  When he was done, Ventura smiled.

"That's pretty clever."

"Maybe the Pakistanis, they hate the Chinese.  They'd find a use for
it."

"This is all moot.  I can guarantee you, the Chinese will not be
walking out of this theater with you as their  E

hostage.  At the first sign of trouble they will all become past tense.
This is what I do, Patrick."

The use of his first name rattled him even more.  Morrison took a
ragged breath, let it out, then took a larger one and held it for a
moment.  Deep breaths.  Calm down.

"All right."

The movie wasn't scheduled to start for another thirty minutes--but it
was definitely show time.

 Wednesday, June 15th Quantico, Virginia

Toni had planned to sit down and tell Alex what she felt, to apologize
for losing her temper, and to try to get him to see her side of
things.

It seemed like it would work out, because the first thing he said was
"Listen, I'm sorry about losing my temper."

That was a great start.  She said, "Me, too."

But that was as far as it got.  Alex's secretary opened the conference
room's door and said, "Commander, we just got a distress call from Jay
Gridley's virgil."

"What?"

"District police are on the way.  Here is the location."

Alex came to his feet.

Toni said, "I saw Jay earlier, he was here--" "He went into town," Alex
said.  He headed for the door in a hurry.  To his secretary, he said,
"Get the helicopter warmed up and get the GPS location to the pilot.  I
want to be in the air in three minutes."

"Alex?"

"This place is falling apart," he said.

"Nothing is going right!"  He looked at her.

"You coming?"

She nodded.

Washington, D.C.

"Hit him again," Fiscus said.

Rudy nodded.  He threw a short uppercut that slammed into Jay's belly
like a steel brick.

Jay doubled over, the pain overwhelming.  He couldn't breathe, couldn't
see for the tears clouding his vision, couldn't believe how much it
hurt!  He would have fallen if Vie hadn't been standing behind him,
holding him up, his huge paws meaty clamps on Jay's upper arms.

Nothing in VR had ever come close to this, nothing.

"Catch your breath, Mr.  Net Force Agent, and think about it a
second."

Jay managed to breathe again after a few seconds.  He felt like puking,
the urge was almost impossible to resist.

"You feel better?  Good.  Now tell me--why are you looking for KS.?"

How long had he been here?  It felt like years, but it couldn't have
been more than a couple of minutes.  He'd tried to stall them, but
Fiscus wasn't buying it, and after the second punch.  Jay didn't know
how much longer he could hold out.  One more, maybe.

"Fuck you."

"You're not my type, but maybe Rudy will take you up on that later,
hey?  Boys, girls, sheep, cows--doesn't matter to him.  One more,
Rudy."

Jay went out with the third punch, at least partially.

The intense flash of pain went from red to gray, and time seemed to
ooze lazily, like tar on a hot summer street.

"--got all day," Fiscus was saying.

"And Rudy ain't even broke a sweat.  I seen him work the heavy bag for
ten, fifteen minutes, four, five hundred punches.  You ain't a bag full
of batting, son.  How long you figure you'll last?"

Jay's blurry vision was enough to let him see that gap-toothed smile,
and he knew that Fiscus and his two apes could and might beat him to
death.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay, I'll tell you."

"Sheeit," Rudy said.

"See, I told you he was just getting warmed up.  Don't worry, Rudy, you
can throw a couple more if Mr.  Net Force Agent gets too sluggish.
Okay, let me hear it."

Jay took a raspy breath.  The guy didn't know, so it didn't matter what
he said.  Jay could create scenario, and writing the description and
background and dialog was part of that.  He could spin it, and how
would this guy know different?

"Okay.  We came across a computer break-in, in New York.  A stock
trading company, and--" "Rudy."

The punch took Jay under the armpit on the right side, a left, hooking
move, and he felt, and thought he heard, one of his ribs crack under
the impact.

"Uuuhhh!  Ow, ow, what did you do that for?!  I'm telling you!"

"Nah, you ain't.  You're lying.  I might look stupid, but :

I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, kid.  Every lie buys you
another slam.  Try again.  " Jay felt a great wave of despair wash over
him.  He was going to die.  He knew it.  No matter what he told them,
in the end, they were going to kill him.

Washington, D.C.

"That's it, that surplus store," the cop said.

In the big tactical van, Michaels nodded.  According to the protocols
for Net Force distress calls established with the police, the local
cops had arrived Code 2--fast, but without sirens.  They set up a
perimeter and the local version of SWAT or SERT or whatever was ready
to go in, but Michaels had gotten there before they hit the building,
and he wanted to go along.

The police lieutenant in charge of the scene looked at Michaels's taser
and shook his head.

"Not a good idea, Commander.  We know who this guy is that runs the
store.

We're pretty sure he's got enough illegal hardware in there to equip a
third-world army, and he's usually not alone.  Your little zapper won't
cut it."

"I'll stay behind the team.  That's my man in there."

"I'm going, too," Toni said.  She held her own taser.

"What is this, a goddamn parade?  Where's the marching band and the
baton twirlers?"

"I can make some calls.  Lieutenant, and get the heavy hitters into it
if I have to.  My boss can call yours.  You want me to do that?"

"Shit.  No.  Put masks and vests on and stay in the back and the hell
out of the way, you understand?  If you get killed, don't bitch about
it to me."

"All right."

He looked at Toni.  This was not the time to tell her to stay behind,
he could see that, but it was the first thing he wanted to say.  Maybe
she was right.  Maybe she couldn't work for him.  Maybe he was too
protective.  He did not want her in there.

"Heads up, people," the lieutenant said into his com.

"We're going in thirty seconds.  And we got two feebs riding the
Caboose.  Don't nobody shoot them by accident."

The lieutenant pulled a pair of spider silk vests with ceramic
interlock armor and the initials D.C.P.D. stenciled in reflective
yellow on the backs.

"Put these on.  They'll stop handgun rounds and a lot of rifle bullets.
Grab a gas mask and helmet.  We're going in with flash-bangs and puke
gas."

Michaels nodded.

"Fifteen seconds," the lieutenant said into the com.

"Go get into position.  Behind Sergeant Thomas over there.

And stay behind him."

Michaels glanced at Toni, and they jumped from the back of the mobile
command post and ran.

Woodland Hills, California

Morrison and Ventura were in their seats in the theater when an "usher"
walked Wu down the aisle.  The section they were in had been roped off,
so that they sat in the middle of a block of four rows alone; the other
seats in the block were all empty.  There were maybe forty people
already in their seats, with a few others trickling in.

Wu carried a fold-out laptop computer slung over one shoulder--and a
big tub of popcorn.

Ventura smiled at that.  Had to give the man credit for style.

Ventura and Morrison both stood, and Wu moved to join them.  He slipped
under the velvet rope to sit between Ventura and Morrison.  While he
was talking and concentrating on the scientist, Ventura would be behind
him.

Wu held up the tub of popcorn.

"Want some?  I think it's got real butter on it.  It should be real, it
cost four bucks."

Ventura was tempted to dig around and see if there was a pistol hidden
there--he'd have a small one under the popcorn--but both he and
Morrison declined the offer.

Ahead of them, the huge screen was still dark.  There wouldn't be any
coming attractions or ads run today.

"What time does the movie start?"

"We have a few minutes," Ventura said.

"Good, good, we can get this business taken care of and enjoy the
picture.  Same people did this who did Quintan's Revenge, and it's
gotten good reviews."

He sounded relaxed enough, and that was a good sign.

He'd brought in ten people, who were scattered around the theater with
their own tubs of popcorn or boxes of candy, so he ought to feel as if
he was in control of the situation, or at least be on a par with
Ventura.  He either couldn't sense the sights lined up on his skull
from the projection booth, or he really was a chilly character not
afraid to die.

"Now you know we Chinese like to dawdle and make polite small talk
before we discuss business, but this is America and I like to fit in,
so what say we get down to it?"  He slipped the computer off his
shoulder and unrolled the flexible pop-up LCD screen, locked it into
place, and then unfolded the keyboard.  The computer came on with a
small chimed chord, and the screen lit up.

Mormon's computer was already up and running, on the seat on the other
side of him.  He picked it up.

"Ah, here we are," Wu said.

"Your bank account number?"

Morrison read off a fifteen-digit series of numbers and letters.

Wu typed it into his computer.  He looked up at Morrison and smiled.

"And that was for ... three hundred million dollars, U.S.?"

"Four hundred million," Morrison said quickly.

"A small joke.  Doctor."  He tapped in the numbers.  He said, "It's a
fair-sized transaction, but nothing huge.  It'll take only a few
seconds for them to verify the account we're transferring from, and
acknowledge the credit."

Ventura did a sweep of the room.  It seemed as if this might come off
with no problems.  His team was on alert.

If anything that looked like a gun, or a canister of gas, or any kind
of weapon, made an appearance in the still-well-lit theater, things
would happen fast.  Nobody was going to be yelling "Drop it!"  or
"Don't move!"  At the first sign of aggression, his people were to cook
the Chinese--all of them--no hesitation, no questions.  Any screwups,
and Wu's people were all history.  It was a harsh response, but the
only way to go here.  One guy blasting away indiscriminately with a
small sub gun or even a pistol could do a lot of damage--and it wasn't
going to happen.

"There you are, Dr.  Morrison.  You should see it on your machine."

Morrison tapped keys.

"Yes.  It's in and verified."  He typed in another sequence.

"The account number and password are both changed."

"Then you have it.  We can deposit but we can't take it back.  You're a
rich man.  Now it's your turn."

Morrison nodded.  He still looked like a man sitting in an electric
chair, waiting for the current to flow.

"Here is the address for our people," Wu said.  He held the computer up
so Morrison could see the screen.

"You send them the data, they say they can have it tested in less than
two hours.  They work, we watch the movie, everybody goes home
happy."

Wu turned to look at Ventura.

"You know, Luther, if it had been left up to me, I expect I would have
tried for a--how shall we say?--cheaper offer."

Ventura gave him a small smile.

"Such an offer couldn't have been ... acceptable, Chilly."

"You don't think so?"

"I know so."

Wu's smile matched Ventura's own.

"It would have been very interesting to see whose opinion was right,
wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

The two of them held gazes for another moment.

Wu said, "Well.  Another time."  He looked away, back at Morrison.

"Doctor, if you would?"

Ventura was victorious.  His smile broadened.

Morrison nodded and started to type in the electronic address.

"Gun!"  somebody screamed---and sure enough, guns started to go off.

 Wednesday, June 15th Washington, D.C.

Toni was right behind Alex.  The gas mask had big, wide lenses that
left her peripheral vision clear, but there was an annoying clicking
sound every time she inhaled.  And she was breathing pretty fast, too.
She forgot about her breathing and the noise fast enough when the first
of the six-man team ahead of them crashed through the door into the
back room of the surplus store.  Bright flashes of actinic light
strobed her, but the mask's polarizers kicked in and blocked the glare
within a hundredth of a second or so.  She should have worn earplugs,
she realized, because the noise was loud inside the building.  A misty
cloud of green gray vapor boiled up with the explosions and lapped
against the walls with the racket.

She heard a triplet of quick, smaller explosions--pap!

pap-pap!--gunshots, she was sure--and Alex dog legged to the left.  She
followed him.  Somebody yelled something she couldn't make out, and
somebody retched so loudly it sounded as if he was turning his guts
inside out.

Alex looked back at her.

"You okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine."

Then it was all over.

The mist, which felt greasy on her bare skin, started to clear, and the
police team spread out enough so Toni could see four men who weren't
cops.  Three of them were on their hands and knees, vomiting.  One was
on his back, blood oozing from holes in his side and one leg.  He had
his head sideways and he was throwing up, too.

One of the men on his knees enjoying the purging benefits of emetic gas
was Jay Gridley.

"Thank God," Toni said into the mask.  The sound was muffled, but she
saw Alex nod.

"Yeah," he said.

Woodland Hills, California

Wu was quick.  He dropped from his seat onto the sticky floor and
tossed the tub of popcorn into Ventura's face as he fell.

Ventura was able to hear the rifle shot from the projection booth, was
aware even as he pulled his own gun that the flat crack of the
small-bore long ann was distinct from the duller, louder handgun
sounds-Wu came up with a gun--it must have been underneath the popcorn
tub--and jammed it at Ventura.  He fired twice-Quick and good, too The
bullets hit Ventura square in the chest, but the titanium trauma plate
in the pocket of the blended Kevlar/ spider silk vest under his shirt
stopped the rounds, even though they felt like sledgehammers against
his sternum-Ventura cleared his own weapon and brought it
around-Morrison was up and running, screaming wordlessly-Wu cursed and
got off another round, higher this time, right on the edge of the
trauma plate-More gunshots blasted in the theater-One-handed, Ventura
fired-one, two, three!--letting the recoil raise the muzzle each time,
so the shots walked up Wu's body, in case he was also wearing a vest,
so the hits were chest-throat-head-"Stop, stop, stop--!"  Morrison
screamed.

Ventura looked up from Wu, saw that Morrison had his own little .22
revolver out and pointed in front of himself as he reached the
aisle-One of Ventura's best shooters--the ex-SEAL, Blackwell-moved to
grab Morrison, to pull him down and out of the line of fire--good,
good!--but Morrison was panicked, and he thrust his weapon out at the
man-"Morrison, no!"  Ventura screamed.

"Don't--!"

Too late.  Morrison pulled the trigger.  Blackwell, coming to save the
scientist, was five feet away, and even Morrison couldn't miss every
time at that range.  At least two or three of the six shots chewed into
Blackwell.  The vest he wore stopped a couple, but one went high, hit
him in the jaw, and Ventura saw a tooth explode from the torn mouth in
slow motion as Blackwell's head jerked to one side-Ah, shit--} And he
saw with razor-edged and expanded clarity as Blackwell did what any
really good trained shooter instinctively did if somebody pointed a gun
at him when the situation went hot-"No!"  Ventura screamed, trying to
bring his own gun up around, but he was mired in subjective slow-time,
and too late.

Blackwell knew Morrison was wearing a vest, and Blackwell didn't want
to die.  So even as he fell, wounded, Blackwell lined his pistol up on
Morrison and stopped the threat-He shot him right between the eyes.

The back of Morrison's head blew out in a spew of brains, blood, and
bone.

Washington, D.C.

He was going to be okay.  Jay realized.  The doctor had taped him up,
given him a shot to counteract the puke gas, and another for pain.
Every breath he took still hurt his ribs a little under the tape, and
his stomach was sore from vomiting, but he was real happy to be feeling
anything at all.

It was sure better than the alternative.

The boss said, "What on Earth possessed you to go into the field on
your own?"

Jay started to shake his head, but that made him dizzy, so he stopped.
He said, "I dunno.  Pure stupidity would be my best guess.  Not ever
gonna happen again, I guarantee that.  Reality sucks."

They were in the hospital's lock ward, where one-eyed Fiscus had been
transferred after they'd patched him up.

He'd been hit twice after firing at the cops, in the side and in the
leg, but neither hit was life-threatening once they stopped the
bleeding.  He was awake, and the boss had flexed his Net Force muscle
to get in and question the guy before the mainline boys and the D.C.
detectives got there.

Jay and Toni were with Michaels as he walked into the room, and they
all nodded at the cop sitting in the chair next to the bed.

"We want some information," Michaels said to Fiscus.

Full of IV tubes and things clipped to his fingertips or taped to his
chest, Fiscus flashed his gap-toothed grin.

"People in Hell probably want ice water, too," he said.

His snakeskin patch was gone, and the eye it had hidden had a milky
film over it.

"Which you'll find out all about if you don't tell me what I want to
know," the boss said.

"Way I figure it, you have kidnapping, assaulting a federal officer,
attempted murder of a policeman, and a shitload of illegal weapons
charges staring you in the face, at the very least.  A man your age?
You're going to die in prison."

That seemed to get his attention.

"And so why the fuck should I help you, I'm gonna die in prison
anyhow?"

"It's real simple.  I can make the federal charges go away.  No
kidnapping, no assault, no visits from the BATF about all that
hardware.  I might even be able to convince the locals to cut you some
slack on the shooting, since you didn't hit anybody.  You could be out
in five, six years, maybe."

Fiscus hesitated for a moment.

Jay could almost see the wheels going inside the man's head.  Don't do
it.  Jay beamed his thoughts at Fiscus.  Go and rot in jail forever,
asshole!

"I can get you a lawyer if you want," Michaels said.

"No, no lawyers.  I'll take the deal.  What do you want to know?"

Michaels nodded.

Woodland Hills.  California

"What a mess," Ventura said to himself again.  He was on the freeway
with the same name as his own, driving in the general direction of
Burbank.

"What a fucking mess."

And it was, too.  Back in the theater were ten shot-up Chinese agents,
all of them either dead or well on the way by now.  Two of his men had
taken stray bullets from the Chinese, but neither were fatal wounds.
Four screenwriters had been hit, one was dead, another one pretty bad,
two fairly minor.  Blackwell was in bad shape, but he'd probably live,
even if he wouldn't be eating any caramel apples for a few months.

Wu was absolutely dead.

And Morrison was also gone, killed by somebody on his own side.

What a pisser that was.

The wounded civilians were being hauled by cars to the nearest
hospital, where they'd be dropped off, the drivers not staying to
answer questions.  Ventura's men would be taken to a doctor who was
paid to take care of people and keep his mouth shut.  The remaining
unwounded screenwriters, twenty-three of them, had been stuffed into a
storeroom and locked in.  Probably half of them were already working on
their next movie, one involving a shootout in a theater.  They wouldn't
starve; there were a lot of candy bars and hot dog buns in there with
them.

Outside, team members had distracted the Chinese surveillance team
where feasible--a pepper bomb in the carpet truck, a sap of lead shot
against the head of the coffee drinker in Starbucks, like that, but
thankfully, no more guns.

Everybody else had taken off on prearranged escape routes.

Ventura realized that he could kiss the IMAX theater good-bye.  Too
bad.  It had been making a profit for the first time in three years.

What a crappy, stinking, rotten piece of work this had been.  Not only
had he lost the client he was supposed to protect, but one of his own
men had done it.  No choice, really.  In Blackwell's shoes, he'd have
probably done exactly the same thing.

/ never should have given Morrison that gun.

Yeah, 20/20 hindsight there.  Too late to think about that now.

Though there never would be a way to be absolutely sure, Ventura knew
what had happened.  One of the Chinese agents had gotten careless,
since his own people were more adept than to show a gun that was
supposed to be hidden.  One of the Chinese agents had gotten
careless.

Whichever of his people who saw the piece must have felt it was being
brought into play.  All of his shooters had been told to stay
cool--unless a weapon came out.  The shout of "Gun!"  had been the
agreed-upon signal for his shooters to take out their targets, and once
that happened, all bets were off.

Had the Chinese intended to take the shortcut?  To grab Morrison
instead of paying for the data?

Well, it didn't matter.  Done was done, no point in crying over it now.
Still, there were consequences to consider.

The Chinese were going to be most unhappy, and they might well decide
that Morrison and Ventura had ripped them off for their four hundred
million and decide to try and get it back, and that was real bad.
Morrison wasn't going to be giving anything back, and Ventura didn't
have it.

He changed lanes, and a fat man in a black Porsche honked at him for
cutting in.  Ventura had a sudden urge to pull his Coonan and put a
round into the fat man's windshield.  Honk at somebody else,
dickhead.

He resisted the urge.  That wouldn't help matters, to start shooting
morons on the L.A. freeway.  Once you started, you'd run out of ammo
quick.  Probably couldn't carry enough extra rounds in a moving van to
get them all... He giggled at the thought.  He was stressed out, yes,
better just take a few deep breaths and think this through.

He did just that.  Three deep breaths, in and out, and now think about
it calmly.

Well.  The first thing was, the couple of million he had tucked away
didn't seem like all that much money anymore.

The way he figured it, he was going to have to disappear, just as he
had told Morrison he would have to disappear, forever.  Yes, he was
living on borrowed time and had been for a long time, but the truth
was, he wasn't quite ready to check out yet.

If the deal had come off, he'd have been safe enough from the likes of
Wu.  They'd have gotten their money's worth, and pros didn't need to
take each other out for doing their jobs.

But it hadn't come off.  The Chinese were out that money; they didn't
get what they wanted, and too bad for them.  This was certainly going
to make them real unhappy.

Morrison hadn't given Ventura the account number, so he couldn't get
his hands on it, either.  Too bad for everybody.

The fat man found an opening on the outside lane, whipped the Porsche
around Ventura, and zipped past.  He waved his middle finger at Ventura
as he went by, and though he couldn't hear him, Ventura could read the
man's lips easy enough.  A fourteen-letter word.

Maybe he could shoot just the one and stop?

The Porsche accelerated and gained away, and Ventura forgot the fat
man.

The Chinese money was out of reach, but--there was more where that had
come from.  Because if he had been telling the truth--and Ventura had
no reason to doubt that he had been--Morrison had told him where to
find the secret that had just caused more than a dozen people to die.
And the Chinese weren't the only oysters in the ocean who had pearls.

Yeah, okay, it was a bad deal all around, a major disaster, a perfect
example of Murphy's Law.  But now that it was done, Ventura had to get
on with his life.  That moment was past.  If you drove down the road
looking only into your rearview mirror, you were going to plow into
somebody ahead of you.  Time to look forward.

Somebody could still benefit from all this, and it might as well be
him.  He could even drop the price a little.  He didn't need four
hundred million, he could get by on half that.  No point in being
greedy, was there?

He drove toward the airport in Burbank.  He had a flight leaving in an
hour.  It would probably take the screenwriters longer than that to
figure a way out of the storeroom.

Yes.  He had a course of action now.  He knew what he was going to
do.

 Wednesday, June 15th Quantico, Virginia

"I just got a call from Julio Fernandez," Jay said.

"John Howard is home."

"That was quick," Toni said.

Michaels nodded at her.

"Yeah.  Old soldiers never die, but they don't hang out in hospitals
tempting fate if they can help it."

They were in the conference room at HQ.  Somebody had put a pot of
coffee and a box of assorted pastries on the table.  Michaels picked up
a bear claw, examined it, and put it back.  He selected a glazed donut
instead.  A nice sugar rush and a little caffeine, just what he needed,
so he could rot his teeth, court diabetes, and raise his blood pressure
all at the same time.

Hell with it.  Given the way things had been going lately, what
difference would it make?  He took a big bite of the donut.

"Julio says Howard's ready to come back to work now."

"He can take a few days off and heal.  So can you."

Jay shook his head.

"I'm fine.  I want to be here for this.  It'll be a lot less strenuous
in VR.  I can ride the net here, or I can do it at home, but I'm gonna
ride somewhere."

"All right," Michaels said.  ""Let review what we have.

According to your Mr.  Fiscus, the man we are looking for used to be
some kind of freelance hired assassin who supposedly got out of that
business and into body guarding a few years back.  Aside from "Dick
Grayson," he uses a variety of names, among them Diego, Gabriel,
Harbor, Colorado, and Ventura.  Is he Hispanic, do we think?"

Jay laughed, then said, "Ow."  He pressed his hand against his sore
rib.

"What?"

"I shouldn't laugh.  I don't think he's necessarily Hispanic or Latino,
Boss.  Those are all names of Los Angeles freeways."

Michaels nodded.

"Okay, so he knows about Batman and the SoCal highway system.  What
else do we have?"

"Zip.  I looked in the phone directories," Jay said.

"He ain't listed, and we haven't been able to get a facial-points match
on any police agency computers.  Man has a very low e-profile."

Michaels looked at Toni.  He had to ask.

"You're going to take the job with mainstream, aren't you?  Working for
the director?"

"I--yes."

"So is the information flow going to be both ways?"

"That's what the job description says."

"Okay.  See what you can get from them on this."

If they could find out who this Ventura character was, if they could
background and history him, they might be able to track him down.  And
if they found him, they'd find Morrison.

The intercom blipped.

"Yes?"

His secretary said, "Sir, we have an incoming call from the director
for Toni Fiorella."

Michaels frowned.  He waved at Toni, who picked up a handset on the
table.

"Yes, ma'am?"

The director said something, and Toni nodded.

"Yes, ma'am, I have decided."  She glanced at Michaels.

"I'll take it."

His gut twisted a little at that, but she was a grown woman, she had to
make her own choices.

"Yes, ma'am, go ahead."

Toni listened for what seemed like a long time.  Neither Michaels nor
Jay made any pretense they were doing anything other than listening to
her end of the conversation.

"I see.  Yes, I'll tell them.  Yes, ma'am, I'm glad to be onboard."

She cradled the phone, looking disturbed.

"What?"  Michaels said.

"Sheriff's deputies in Woodland Hills, California, were called to a
disturbance at a movie theater there a few minutes ago.  Inside, they
found more than a dozen bodies, all shot dead, plus a locked storeroom
full of screenwriters."

"Corpses and a room full of screenwriters?  This concerns us how?"  Jay
put in.

"One of the bodies was IDed as a man named Qian Ho

Wu, a registered foreign lobbyist who the FBI Counter Espionage Unit
has tagged as a probable spy for China."

"Uh-huh?"

"One of the bodies has been identified as Dr.  Patrick Morrison."

"Oh, shit," Jay said.  Then he thought about it a second, and said,
"But that solves our problem, doesn't it?  Dead men don't generate
radio broadcasts."

Toni said it before Michaels had a chance to say it:

"You're assuming he didn't tell anybody how he did it before he
died."

"Well, he probably didn't tell the Chinese.  Maybe they were after him
because they figured out he was responsible for what happened to their
villages.  They caught up with him, there was a shoot-out, end of
story."

"Too easy," Michaels said.  He tapped the com.

"Get me on the next flight going to Los Angeles."

"You're not a field agent, Alex," Toni said.

"The FBI will take care of this, you can't--" "But I can," he said,
cutting her off.

"Portland got zapped with some kind of death ray, the leader of my
strike team is in bed nursing a gunshot wound, and my top computer whiz
just got the crap beat out of him--not to mention I had the guy
responsible for all of this in my hands and I let him walk away.  This
has been a FUBAR from the word go."

"You didn't know--" "But I know now.  You want to tell your new boss
I'm overstepping my bounds, fine, go ahead.  I can take some vacation
days myself if I have to."

"You don't have to," she said.

"And if you want, I'll go with you."

He considered his next words carefully.  He considered not saying
anything, but decided he needed to: "This is Net Force's problem, Toni,
and I think Net Force should take care of it."

She blinked at him.

"And I'm not part of Net Force anymore, is that what you're saying?"

"You said it, not me."

She nodded.

"I see."

He didn't like the way it made him feel, didn't like the distress on
her face, but it was going to come out eventually, and better sooner
than later.  Maybe they could salvage their personal relationship; he
sure hoped so.  But the job had already changed.  It wasn't going to be
the same as it had been.  If Toni didn't work for him anymore, okay,
fine, he could learn to deal with that.  If she was going to report
about what he did to somebody else, he needed to have some control as
to what he let her see and hear.  If the director wanted to keep tabs
on him, all right, that was her prerogative.  Nothing said he had to
make it easy for her.

Toni had made her choice.  Now they'd both have to live with it.

In the air over northern California

Ventura glanced around, uneasy.  There was nobody looking at him, and
he hadn't seen anybody following him, but something felt.  .off
somehow. He was in full-alert mode, scanning, listening, being aware,
and he hadn't spotted anything about which to be worried, but even so,
something was not quite right.

He glanced at his watch.  Maybe it was the flight.  He was concerned
about being in the jet's first-class cabin-"Can I get you anything?"

Ventura gave the young flight attendant a polite smile.

"No, thank you."  He had booked a business-class e-ticket, using one of
a dozen fake IDs he always carried, but the flight had been full, and
by the time he'd checked in, the only empty seats remaining had been in
first class.  Normally, he didn't fly first class; it was harder to
blend into the herd when you were up front.  But demanding to sit in
the tourist section would really make you stand out-who refused a free
upgrade?--and the idea was to be as anonymous as possible.  You wanted
to be just another middle-aged businessman, do nothing to stick in
somebody's memory, and hope you didn't remind the stewardess of her
favorite uncle.

The attendant moved on, and Ventura turned to stare out at the terrain.
The flight from L.A. to Seattle took about three hours.  He'd rent a
car at SeaT ac and drive to Port Townsend, probably another three or
four hours-you had to allow for the ferry ride, plus he wanted to do a
little circling for his approach.  That would put him there in the
evening, but it didn't get dark up this far north in the summer before
maybe nine-thirty or ten.  So there was no real hurry, since night was
your friend.  Plenty of time to stop and have supper, get set up, do
the job.

He looked out through the jet's double-plastic window.

There was a big snow-covered mountain below and in the distance.
Shasta?  Must be.

Ventura figured the local authorities in L.A. had uncovered the mess in
the theater by now, and if so, they had certainly identified Dr.
Morrison.  As hard as the feds would have been looking for Morrison
after the shootings in Alaska, they'd be on the case quickly.  He had
5

considered hauling the corpse away, disposing of it, but since the man
was dead and no longer his responsibility, it was tactically much
smarter to let him be found.  He'd made sure that Morrison's wallet was
still in the dead man's pocket, to speed things up.  That would
certainly stop the direct search, and maybe the feds wouldn't be all
that interested in looking for accomplices.

It wouldn't slow the Chinese down.  Surely Wu had passed his intel
along to somebody higher up the food chain--Ventura couldn't imagine
that the man's stingy government had given him hundreds of millions of
dollars to spend without knowing every detail of what they were buying.
The Chinese would very much like to speak to anybody connected to the
deal.  Once they found out Morrison was dead, they'd really have their
underwear in a wad.  Ventura would be at the top of their list of
people to see.

The feds would have dropped their surveillance of Morrison's house as
soon as they realized what had happened to him--dead men didn't move
around a lot on their own, and the only way he'd be coming home would
be in a box.  Ventura's team was, of course, long gone, pulled off as
soon as he'd realized the man he'd shot in Alaska was a marshal and not
a Chinese agent, and that more feds would thus be coming to have a
little chat with Morrison's spouse.  He hadn't told his client, who
thought his young trophy wife was protected--no point in giving him
anything else to worry about.

The feds would probably want to have a few more chats with the widow
Morrison, and certainly the Chinese would pay the young lady a visit,
but since she didn't know anything, she couldn't tell either side
anything.  She might be joining her late husband by the time the
Chinese figured that out, but that wasn't his problem--as long as he
wasn't there when the Yellow Peril came to call.

The Yellow Peril.  He smiled.  He wasn't a racist.  Sure, he played
that card for people like Bull Smith, to allow them to believe he was
simpatico with their beliefs, but he didn't care one way or another
about somebody's skin color or gender.  He'd worked with people of
every race, male and female, and the single criterion that mattered to
him was how well they could do the job.  If you could pull the trigger
when it came to that, and hit your mark, you could be a green
hermaphrodite with purple stripes for all he cared.  He'd learned the
term "Yellow Peril" from the old Fu Manchu books, material that had
been written in an age where racism was the default belief and nobody
thought much about it.

Normally for this kind of work Ventura would have wanted to take his
time.  He'd get to know the territory, learn the patterns, who went
where, when, and how, and not move until he had everything pinned down.
The more you knew, the fewer chances for surprises.  He didn't have
that luxury now.  He needed to move quickly, get his business done, and
leave this behind him.  He had his money cleared, clean IDs, and safe
places where he could hide until he had a chance to work out his
longer-term plans.

Being in the moment didn't mean you couldn't think about the future; it
merely meant you didn't live in the future.

He was, he figured, in a fairly good position.  Still there was that
nagging uneasiness, that sense of being a bug on a slide.  As if a
giant eye could appear in the microscope at any time, staring down at
him.  He did not like the feeling.

Well.  You did the best you could, and that was that;

nothing else mattered.

They were still an hour or more away from SeaT ac

He'd get some rest.  It might be a while before he had another chance.
He took a series of slow, deep breaths.

In three minutes, he was asleep.

 Quantico, Virginia

Toni went to the small gym to work off the tension and anger she felt.
There was a guy in steel-rimmed glasses, a T-shirt, and bike shorts
doing hat ha yoga in the corner, otherwise the place was empty.  She
hurried through her own stretching routine, bowed in, and began
practicing djurus, working "the triangle, the tiga.  Half an hour
later, when she was done, she started footwork exercises on the square,
langkas on the sliwa.

The moves were there, automatic after so many years, but her mind was
elsewhere.

Alex was upset with her, that was obvious.  Well, what had she
expected?  That he would smile and pat her on the head and offer his
congratulations?  She tried to see it from his viewpoint, but she knew
she couldn't have it both ways, not this time.  This was the best
thing.  Working for him had become a sore point even before they had
gone to London; he wasn't treating her like he did the other members of
the Net Force team, he was shielding her, and she didn't want that, not
in the work.  So, okay, there was going to be an uncomfortable period
while he adjusted to her new job.  She didn't like it, but that was how
it seemed to be working out.

In the long run, she kept telling herself, it would be better for them.
They'd be able to relate to each other more like equals, the personal
relationship wouldn't be bogged down in the professional one.

Yeah, but in the long run, we're all dead, aren't we?

So what happens after a couple months of nobody having a good time if
you or Alex get hit by a bus crossing the street?  How is that going to
fit in with your "long run" plan, hmm?

Toni stopped moving and stared into the mirror at the end of the room.
Crap.  I really don't need this.

But--what help was there for it?  What else could she do?  She had to
make a living!

She sighed, went back to her footwork.

A few minutes later, she was aware that the yoga guy had finished his
routine and left, but that he'd been replaced by a trio of other men.
Two of them were in karate uniforms, the third wore dark blue FBI
sweats.  One of the karate guys wore a brown cloth belt tied around his
waist to keep his gi shut, the other a black belt.  They were watching
her.  Watching and smiling.  Then the guy in sweats leaned over and
said something to the other two.

Pentjak silat wasn't a flashy art; a lot of what went on in it didn't
look particularly impressive to the uninitiated.

The last time a martial arts player from another style stood here and
watched her practice, he had made the mistake of making some ignorant
remarks out loud.  She had been having a bad day when that
happened--not nearly as bad as this one--and she had demonstrated to
the loudmouth that what she was doing was in many ways superior to what
he knew about fighting.  It had been a painful lesson for the man.

The lesson she had learned was pretty painful, too.

She didn't want to think about what had happened with--and to--that man
later, but she couldn't avoid it.

Rusty had become her student, then her lover, however briefly, and as a
direct result, he was dead.

Given the day so far, the opportunity to offer a correction to any--or
all--of these three if they spouted off would feel pretty good.  It
wasn't part of a self-defense mind-set to entertain such thoughts, but
silat wasn't primarily a self-defense art, it was a fighting art, and
there was a big difference in your level of aggressiveness.

Toni stopped what she was doing and walked toward the trio.

"Afternoon," she said.

"Can I help you with something?"

The guy in sweats was the oldest of the three men; he had short and
curly gray hair.  He smiled and gave her a small bow.

"No, ma'am," he said.

"We were just admiring your art, guru.  Silat Tjimande!

That surprised her.  He got the subset wrong, but he knew it was silat
and he had enough appreciation and understanding to call her "guru," as
well.  Damn.

"It's Serak," she said, the "k" silent.

"But it's Western Javanese, like Tjimande.  I'm surprised you
recognized it."

"I used to work out with an old Dutch kuntao teacher in San Diego," he
said.

"He had done a little training in silat as a boy.  My JKD teacher also
had some training in Harimau, tiger-style."

Toni nodded.  JKD--jeet kun do, the way of the intercepting fist--was
the style created by the late Bruce Lee.

It was a hybrid system, and while they weren't big on forms, many of
the moves were based on wing chun, which to some people looked at least
superficially like silat.  At least the WE players knew in theory what
the centerline was, even if they didn't cover it adequately according
to Serak standards ... If Curly here knew enough to recognize and
respect what she was doing, he probably wouldn't be interested in
trying to deck her to impress his friends.  Silat fighters didn't go in
much for point-sparring, and for that matter, neither did JKD
players.

Well.  Too bad.  Kicking somebody's butt would feel pretty good about
now.

And she was going to have to do something or she would explode.

But--what could she do?

Woodland Hills, California

It was dark by the time Michaels got to the theater, and there really
wasn't much left to look at by then.  Truth was, there really wasn't
any good reason for him to be here, except to see things--such as they
were--for himself.

Anybody involved with this who was still alive was undoubtedly long
gone.

The bodies had been removed, the screenwriters released after giving
their statements, and the local police still puzzled as to what had
happened.  The mainline FBI op who showed up to meet Michaels was a
junior man,

not the special-agent-in-charge, but he was willing to say what he
thought.  His name was Dixon.

Michaels and Agent Dixon ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape
covering the doors and went into the building.

"Here's what we know," Dixon said.

"The dead men, all thirteen of them, were shot in the theater proper.
We have identification on six so far"--he looked at his palm
computer--"Wu, Morrison, a screenwriter named C. B. Shane, and three
men with criminal records: two Vietnamese-Americans, Jimmy Nguyen and
Phuc Khiev, and a man named Maxim Schell.  Nguyen, Khiev, Schell, and
Morrison were armed with handguns.  Nguyen's was in his hand, Khiev's
on the floor under his body, Schell's still tucked into his belt.  None
of them got a shot off, though some of the other dead men did fire
their weapons.

"Morrison's gun, a little .22, was locked in his right hand in a death
grip, and shot empty.  Nobody got hit with a .22 that we can tell.  We
haven't come up with IDs on the other dead men yet, but all of them had
guns, too."

Michaels said, "So what do you think happened here?"

"No way to tell for sure.  The dead guys were mostly shot in the back
or back of the head, so what it looks like is some kind of ambush.  You
have to figure that if you have a dozen armed men, most of whom didn't
do any shooting before they got taken down, there were a lot of other
guys in here blasting away, too.  Forensics hasn't gotten the blood all
sorted out, but a quick prelim says there were a few who got hit hard
enough to bleed, but who didn't stick around."

"Jesus."

"We'd take his help if he offered.  You must have some ideas.  You got
anything for us?"

Michaels thought about it.  Toni would tell the director anyway, it was
her job now, so it didn't matter if Dixon knew.  He said, "Morrison had
some kind of valuable data and he used it against the Chinese.  We
think maybe they were after him.  Maybe they caught up with him."

"What kind of data?"

"Sorry, that's need-to-know only."

Dixon shook his head.

"Doesn't seem right.  The dead guys were all sitting down when the
shooting started.  And according to the interviews with the
screenwriters, everything was quiet until somebody yelled "Gun!"  At
which point, all hell busted loose.  It sounds more like a negotiation
than a face-off."

"It must have been an ugly scene in here."

"Yeah.  Though a couple of the screenwriters were more pissed because
they didn't get to see the movie than they were upset about all the
corpses.  Welcome to L.A."

Michaels considered what Dixon had said.  A negotiation.

Yes, it did, didn't it?  Why would the Chinese be negotiating with a
man who had wiped out a couple of their villages?

Maybe they wanted him to tell them how.  Maybe they were willing to pay
for it?

Well, if Wu was the guy negotiating, he hadn't done too good a job of
it, had he?  And Morrison wasn't going to be pedaling anything,
either.

Paris, France

Jay sat slouched in a wicker chair at the Cafe Emile, looking out on
the Champs Elysees, not far from the Arc de

Triomphe.  He sipped black, bitter espresso from a tiny china cup, and
smiled at the couples who strolled past.

The war was over nearly two years, the Nazi occupation history. Postwar
Paris in the spring was a much nicer place than a military surplus
store in any season.

Henri, the waiter, approached.  He had in his hand a small paper
tablet.  He gave Jay a nod that was both servile and arrogant and
offered him the tablet.  "

"Ere iz ze list you wanted.  Monsieur Greedlee."

"Merci."  Jay took the tablet and waved Henri away.  He looked at the
list, scanned down the row of names-no ... no ... no ... wait!

Jay sat upright, bumped the table, and sloshed espresso from the cup.
Yes!  There it was!

He snapped his fingers loudly, caught Henri's attention.

"Garcon!  Voulez-vous bien m'indiquer ou se trou ve Ie telephone?  Je
desire appelez faire!"

Henri rewarded Jay with a sneer.

"Bettair you should work on ze pronunciation and ze grammar first,
monsieur!"

The arrogant prick knew he wanted to make a call, but he had to correct
his French first.

"Montrez du doigt, asshole!"

Henri shrugged off the insult and did as Jay requested-he pointed
toward the cafe.

Jay stood and hurried to find the phone.

Wednesday, June 15th Woodland Hills, California

Michaels had supper at the hotel, and when room service brought him the
chicken sandwich, it had bean sprouts on it.  Well, of course.  This
was L.A.

He ate the sandwich mechanically, not really tasting it.

He was screwed, there was nowhere to go from here.  Toni had been
right, he wasn't a field agent.  He couldn't just -hop on a plane, fly
to a crime scene, and expect to spot some crucial clue that the local
police and FBI forensics team had somehow missed.  He knew better.  But
he had needed to see the place for himself, hoping it would somehow jog
something in him.

Well, it hadn't.  And here he was in a hotel in La-La Land, eating a
chicken sandwich with bean sprouts, without a clue as to what he should
do next.

On the bedside table, his virgil lit, telling him it was bad to the
bone.  That was probably Toni, calling to tell him what an idiot he
was.  At the moment, he was inclined to agree with her.

The tiny screen on the multipurpose toy didn't show Toni's face,
however.  It was Jay Gridley.

"What's up.  Jay?"

"I think I got him.  Boss."

Michaels stared at the virgil.

"What?  How?  Where?"

"I crunched all the commercial airline flights leaving SoCal in the
last twelve hours.  Burbank, LAX, John Wayne, in Orange County."

"And you found Ventura?"

"No.  But I did find a Mr.  B. W. Corona."

"I don't see--" "It's another freeway name.  Boss."

"Kind of a reach, isn't it?"

"Maybe not.  Guy booked a ticket two days ago, a round-trip to Seattle.
He was originally scheduled for this evening, but he called and changed
it to an earlier flight.

Return is open-ended."

"I don't see how that makes it any more certain."

"Okay, look.  He planned to leave tonight, but there was some kind of a
problem, a shoot-out, so he had to take off early."

"But he's planning to come back, your Mr.  Corona."

"If you're on the run, you don't buy a one-way ticket, that's a red
flag, first thing cops look for."

"But why would he use a name we might know?"

"Because he doesn't know the freeway names have been compromised.  He
doesn't know we picked up his pal at the surplus store in Washington,
so why would he throw away perfectly good ID?"

"Still sounds like a stretch."

Jay did an imitation of a late-night infomercial: "But wait, but wait,
don't order yet, listen to this!"

The virgil's screen was tiny, but it had good resolution, and Michaels
could see Jay's grin easily enough.

"I checked the car rental places at SeaT ac  A Mr.  B. W. Corona walked
into Avis, no reservation, and rented a midsize Dodge ten minutes after
the flight from L.A.

landed late this afternoon.  You got a computer terminal there in your
room.  Boss?"

"Yes."

"Plug your virgil into it, I want to show you something."

Michaels opened the terminal, lit the screen, and tapped the infrared
send-and-receive code into his virgil.  Jay's face appeared on the
hotel's computer screen.

"I've got your visual on the hotel's computer," Michaels said.

"Stand by."

The image of Jay was replaced by a digital line-by-line image.  It was
a close-up of a California driver's license.

"This came from the counter scanner at Avis.  They log all licenses."

The man in the hologram had short hair, but a full beard.  Could that
be Ventura?

Michaels couldn't tell.

"I don't see the guy in our sketch."

"No^law against growing a beard, having your picture taken, then
shaving.  But forget the picture."

Michaels was already scanning the information on the license.  He got
no farther than the name.

"Son of a bitch!

Why didn't you tell me this in the first place?"

"C'mon, Boss, you always save the best part of a story for last.  You
want me to call the Washington state police and have him picked up?"

"I suppose you know where he is, too, huh?"

"Sure."

"Oh, really?"

Jay laughed.

"You are really gonna love this part.  Avis has theft-recovery devices
installed in their fleet.  Somebody decides to keep a car instead of
turning it in?  They can dial a number and turn on a little broadcast
unit wired into the car's battery.  The unit sends a GPS signal to the
nice folks at Brink's, and they can tell you exactly where the vehicle
is."  He shifted back into the infomercial announcer's voice: "Now how
much would you pay?"

"Son of a bitch."  Michaels looked at the computer's flat screen  The
name on the license was the final selling point: The "B.W."  stood for
"Bruce Wayne."  And everybody who read comics, watched television
cartoons, or went to action adventure movies knew that Bruce Wayne was
the secret identity of Batman, mentor and elder partner of Robin the
Boy Wonder, aka Dick Grayson.

If this wasn't the guy they wanted, it was one hell of a coincidence.

"All right.  Jay, I'm impressed.  What will it take to get the car
rental company to give us the tracking information?"

"Already done.  Boss.  You want to guess where he's going?"

"Surprise me."

Jay laughed again.

 Wednesday, June 15th Port Townsend, Washington

It was almost nine p.m. when Ventura rolled into the small tourist
village of Port Townsend.  And though he had the GPS maps hi sops had
sent in with their electronic reports, he spent thirty minutes driving
around, getting a feel for the place.  Situated on a fat,
semi-hook-shaped isthmus jutting into Puget Sound, the sleepy town had
once upon a time been the gateway to the U.S. Northwest via the Straits
of Juan de Fuca.  Those glory days were long past, and now the tourists
came to see some of the prime examples of Victorian-style houses left
in the country.  Ventura had been here in the daylight, and it looked
almost as if somebody had gone back in time, grabbed a section of San
Francisco just before the Great Earthquake of 1906, and dropped it up
here.  Some of the larger and more ornate old houses were now
commercial businesses or bed-and-breakfast lodgings, but many of them
were still in use as regular housing.  There was a paper mill still
working down on the waterfront as you got to town, but other than that,
not much industry.

The main drag downtown was Water Street, where most of the old
buildings were pre-turn-of-the-century.

There was a restaurant and marina at the end of the street, and a lot
of nicely kept wooden boats moored there.

Above downtown, overlooking a bluff, Lawrence Street was the parallel
uptown road.  Here were stores, a theater, and other odds and ends.
From Lawrence Street, Taylor Street ran up the hill to Foster, which
was where Morrison's house was.  A bit farther to the north was the old
Fort Warden Military Reservation, now a park where you could rent an
officer's or a noncom's old house and spend a few days hiking and
exploring the long-empty bunkers.

Morrison hadn't snagged one of the Victorian homes, but a more modest
stone house built in the 1920s.  It hadn't been cheap, according to his
operative's research, but it wasn't outrageously expensive, since he'd
bought it just before the big real estate boom hit here.  Houses that
had been going for two hundred thousand three years ago now went for
half again that much.  The town was in the Olympic rain shadow, and
while they did get some rain and wind, it was a lot less wet than much
of northern Washington state.  A lot of the baby boomers had decided
this was a good place to retire and enjoy their golden years.

After his reconnaissance patrol, Ventura found a restaurant still open
and had a late supper.  He took his time, and when he was done, he
parked downtown and located a busy pub.  He bought a beer and nursed
it, killing more time.  It was after ten-forty-five p.m. when he left,
having spoken to nobody but the waitress.

At this time of night, given the lack of traffic--there was almost
none--Ventura didn't drive past Morrison's house even once.  If the
Chinese had people watching, or if some laggard fed had hung around, a
car passing by would certainly be an object of interest if it was the
only one they'd seen for an hour or two.  He knew where the house was,
knew how to get there, and he would be a lot harder to spot on foot, as
long as he didn't walk down the middle of the road waving a light.

He had made some purchases when he'd gotten here.

There was a big grocery-department store complex on the highway into
town, not quite a Wal-Mart, but big enough.

He stopped there and bought black jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt,
and a navy blue windbreaker, as well as a pair of thin-soled black
wrestling shoes.  He'd changed clothes in a public rest room downtown
after he left the bar, putting the new clothes on under his pale gray
slacks and white shirt.  The rest room was not far from the police
station, which appeared to have all of two people manning it.

He parked the car five blocks away from Morrison's, in a line of other
cars at the curb.  If some sharp-eye local patrol cop happened to
notice a vehicle that didn't belong to anybody he knew on the street,
likely he would think it was somebody visiting.  A rental car with
Washington plates wouldn't exactly scream "trouble."

He had the Coonan under the windbreaker--it was chilly enough to
justify a light jacket, if not two shirts and two pairs of pants--and
he carried a set of lock picks and spare magazines in one windbreaker
pocket, a small flashlight in the other.  Probably nobody would notice
him at this hour.  In his mind, he was B. W. Corona, married, two kids,
up to meet his family for a holiday.  He was staying at a local B&B
down in town--he couldn't remember the name, but it was that big
Victorian place on the corner, you know?--and he was out walking
because he couldn't sleep.

Subterfuge was in the attitude.  A cop might stop somebody skulking
from shadow to shadow if he spotted him, but a tourist out walking had
a different look, a different feel to him.  Until he got closer to his
destination, that was what Ventura was going to be, a tourist.  A local
cop would see nothing more.  And when the bars started to close, that
was probably where the local patrol car would be--looking for drunks.

Once he was within a block or so of his destination, Ventura would
shuck the white shirt and light slacks and become a ninja, part of the
night.  He would be invisible in the darkness, but if a cop did somehow
miraculously see him, then it would be the cop's bad luck.

At this stage of the game, he couldn't leave anybody behind to tell
tales.

He'd find a quiet spot and wait until it was late enough for the widow
Morrison to get to sleep, then he would move.

The rental car waiting at the Port Townsend Airport was a six-year-old
Datsun that was badly in need of a tune-up.  Only thing they had
available, the guy from Rent-a-Beater had told him.  Somebody had
rented the good Dodge only half an hour earlier.  The contract had been
done over the phone, the rental place was closed, and the keys were
over the sun visor.

Trusting souls up here.  Then again, somebody would really need a ride
pretty bad to swipe this hunk of junk.

The Datsun chugged and rattled along, ran ragged, and nearly stalled
several times.  The dash GPS was broken, but there was a worn and
greasy paper map in the glove box, and between that and his virgil's
GPS, Michaels was able to locate the address he wanted.

He knew that Ventura had been headed here.  Jay had gotten the GPS
readings from Brink's, and Port Townsend wasn't really on the way to
anywhere else, unless you planned to catch a ferry to the San Juan
Islands.  By nine, Ventura's rental car was in the town, and it was
still here now, at eleven, but Michaels had to hurry, he might already
be too late.

It wasn't that outlandish, when you thought about it.

This was where Dr.  Morrison had lived, and within an hour of his
estimated time of death, a man going under the name of Corona, who was
in all likelihood the late doctor's bodyguard, had gotten on a plane
headed this way.  He could be going somewhere else in this town, that
was true, but this was one more coincidence that didn't Play- There
must be something in Morrison's house that Ventura/Corona wanted,
something worth taking a hurried flight here for.  And what did
Morrison have of value?

Well, that was pretty obvious.

Maybe it was something else.  Maybe he was coming here for some other
reason entirely, but Michaels couldn't think of any offhand.

Michaels could call the local police, get some backup from the county
sheriff, and maybe a few state police officers for good measure.
Surround Morrison's house and grab Ventura when he showed up. Simple.

He could do that, but he didn't want to scare the guy off.  If there
were a dozen local cops tromping around this quiet little burg in the
middle of the night, Ventura would have to be blind to miss them.  So
what Michaels had in mind was to find the house, hide somewhere he
could watch it, and wait.  When Ventura showed up, then he'd call in
the cavalry.  Give him time to find what he came for, maybe, to save
Net Force having to look for it themselves.

If Ventura was already there, as soon as Alex saw him come out, he'd
make the call.  Ventura might be able to run, but he couldn't hide, not
as long as he drove his rented car.  And that car, according to Jay,
was parked not far from here, and had been there for at least fifteen
minutes.

Michaels certainly didn't plan to try and take the guy down on his own.
This was the man who had out shot John Howard, and the general was no
slouch when it came to guns, a lot better than Michaels was.  He didn't
even have a gun with him, only the issue taser, and while that would
knock a man on his ass with a single hit, you had to be pretty close to
get that hit.  He had no desire to go up against a highly skilled
killer who was certainly better armed and more desperate than he was.
No, Michaels had a strike team in place, five minutes away--as close as
they could get "without risking alerting their quarry-ready to move on
his signal.  He'd watch, make sure the guy showed up, and then get all
the help he needed.  At least Net Force would get partial credit for
the capture.

And if they were lucky, maybe the workings of the mind control ray as a
bonus.  That would go a long way to making up for all the mistakes.

He looked at the map.  He was still a couple of miles away.  Might as
well make the call he had been putting off.  He pushed the button for
Toni's phone.  Her message came on before even one ring.

"Hey, you've reached Toni Fiorella.  Leave a message and I'll get back
to you soon as I can."

He frowned.  Was she not taking any calls?  Or just not taking his
calls?  Well, okay, it was the middle of the night here, so it was the
wee hours in D.C. Maybe she was just asleep and had turned off the
ringer.

"Toni, it's me.  Just calling to see how you're doing.  I-well, look,
I'm sorry about everything.  I'll be back in town tomorrow, let's sit
down and talk about it, okay?

We can work all this out."

He thumbed the discom button, tucked the virgil back onto his belt.
After he collected Ventura, that would give Toni something she could
pass along to her new boss.

He had to hatch this egg before he could count it as a chicken,
though.

 Wednesday, June 15th Port Townsend, Washington

Ventura had studied the overview maps hi sops had done of the
neighborhood when he'd taken on Morrison as a client.  He knew as much
about the houses and inhabitants for a block in either direction as a
team of good surveillance ops could learn in a short time.  He knew
which houses had dogs, which houses had kids, which houses had night
owls who stayed up watching vids until all hours.  And, fortunately,
there weren't a lot of any of these close to Morrison's.

So it was that Ventura now sat in the backyard of the house behind
Morrison's, nestled into a gap between a small metal utility shed and a
couple of cords of firewood.

From the look of it, the wood was fir, alder, and madrona, a good
combination.  The fir, when dry, would burn very quickly.  The alder
could be used without seasoning, and the madrona would burn longer and
hotter than oak, once it got going.

Odd, the things you learned along the way.

Ventura glanced at his watch.  Almost twelve-thirty.

The lights had been off in Morrison's house for more than an hour, so
the widow was likely asleep by now.  What was her name?  Ah, yes.
Shannon.  That sounded like the name of a teenaged starlet, or somebody
who was a cheerleader for some NFL football team.  Hardly the name one
would connect to a scientist who had been twice her age.

Ventura looked around carefully.  It was quiet, cool, and he hadn't
seen anything to worry him as he had sneaked to this hiding place.  If
there were other watchers here, they must be working the street out
front.  Good and bad, that.  If they were there, he hadn't been able to
see them, which meant they were adept.  Then again, if they were out
front, they wouldn't see him as he went to the back door.

He took several deep breaths, inhaling and letting them out slowly,
oxygenating his blood, trying to relax.  He would go at one.

Michaels had left his beat-up Datsun at the bottom of the hill, half a
block away from where Ventura's rental was parked, and hiked up toward
Morrison's house.  It had been a while since he'd done any covert
surveillance in the field, a long while, and his skills were not as
sharp as he would have liked.  A lot of it came back as he worked his
way toward his target.  He used trees for cover, went through backyards
when possible, kept low, listened carefully for dogs.  He moved
steadily when he left cover, and he stayed in the shadows as much as
possible.  That nobody seemed to notice him was probably more a
testament to the hour than any real skill on his part, but, hey, he'd
take it.

His hormones were flowing pretty good, too.  He sometimes had to
remember to breathe.  He had remembered to shut the ringer off on his
virgil.  It wouldn't do to be skulking in the bushes somewhere and
suddenly start chiming out "Bad to the Bone."

As he drew closer to the house, Michaels wondered exactly what he was
going to do once he got there.  He knew that Ventura's rental car was
still parked down the hill, so unless he missed him in passing, he was
out here on foot somewhere.  Maybe already in the house.

There was a streetlight up ahead on the right.  Michaels crossed the
road, to stay in the darkness.

One a.m."  straight up, time to go.  Ventura ran in a crouch toward the
back door.  It was only a ten-or twelve-second trip, but it seemed to
last for hours.  He kept expecting to feel the impact of a bullet in
the back, even though he knew that wasn't likely--there was no point in
shooting him on the way in.

The trip ended; the bullet had not come.  He tried the doorknob.
Locked.  And the dead bolt would also be locked, if Shannon had been
doing what her husband told her.

Ventura took the leather pouch with his lock picks and torsion tools
from his jacket.  The button lock on the doorknob would be a snap, and
that was all he needed.  He had a key for the dead bolt, since his
people had overseen that lock's installation.

He put the torsion tool into the key slot on the doorknob, used a
triple triangle pick to rake the pins.  Might as well try it the easy
way first, before picking each tumbler separately... The torsion tool
rotated the barrel mechanism on the second rake.  Maybe six seconds
From start to finish Ventura grinned.  He still had the touch.

He slipped the key into the dead bolt, turned it, and came up from his
crouch as he opened the door and stepped into the hallway that led to
the basement and the kitchen.  He closed the door silently behind him.
The alarm keypad was on the wall just past the light switch.  He could
see the red On diode gleaming.  The only other light was from
instrument glows in the kitchen, no help this far away, so he nicked on
the flashlight and covered most of the lens with one hand, allowing
only enough illumination to see the keypad.  He punched in the
four-digit number--1-9-8-6--the year Shannon had been born.  Morrison
had said she wasn't very good at remembering numbers, so he'd wanted to
keep it simple.

1986.  Ventura had shoes older than that.

The hard part was done.  The master bedroom was upstairs, and the
living room/ study was just on the other side of the kitchen/ dining
room.  That was as far as he needed to go.  If he didn't bump into the
furniture or sneeze, the young widow would likely continue her beauty
rest.  He'd reset the alarm and relock the door when he left.  Shannon
would never know he'd been here.

He moved through the kitchen.  There was enough ambient light from the
digital LCD clocks on the stove, microwave oven, and coffeemaker for
him to keep the flashlight lens covered completely.  He didn't like to
use a flashlight on a hot prowl; it was a dead giveaway to anybody who
might be passing by or watching a place.

Unless there was a power outage, residents normally didn't move around
their own houses using flashlights.

But he didn't want to use the overheads or a lamp in here, either.
Watchers would at the very least be alerted that somebody was up and
about.  And some people had a hypersensitivity to light, even when they
slept.  It was as if they could somehow feel the pressure of the
photons on their bodies, although they couldn't see them.  It wouldn't
do for young Shannon to come yawning and padding down the stairs in her
birthday suit, wondering who'd left the light on.  If she saw him, it
would have to be the last thing she saw, and while killing her didn't
bother him per se, finding her corpse would give the authorities pause
to wonder why it had happened.  Whoever had done it must have wanted
something, they'd figure, and Ventura reasoned they would figure out
what pretty quick.  Right now, they didn't know that Morrison had
passed on anything to anybody.  Best to keep it that way until he was
in a safe harbor.

He let a thin ray of the flashlight peek from between his closed
fingers as he stepped into the dining room, just enough to avoid the
furniture.  He crouched low and duck walked toward the study.  There
was what he wanted, just ahead and to the right.

Michaels was prone in a clump of bushes, across the street to the east
side of Morrison's house.  The plants were evergreens, big junipers of
some kind, trimmed into windblown bonsai shapes, but thick enough to
crouch beneath and be mostly covered.  He had worked his way there
through the yard from the east, so he hadn't been visible from the
street or, he hoped, from Morrison's house.

He had just gotten settled when he saw the man all in black scurry in a
crouch to the back door.

That must be Ventura.  A minute later and I would have missed him!

The man fiddled with the lock, and in what seemed no time at all, he'd
opened the door and slipped inside.  Either the door had been unlocked,
or this guy was an expert with picks.  Long ago, Michaels had covered
that in his training, picking locks, but it had taken him half an hour
to open even simple locks, and complicated ones were beyond him.  His
teacher had told him it was a thing of feel, that you either had the
touch or you didn't.  If you didn't, you could get better, but you'd
never be a master at it.

Well, enough ruminating on old training classes.  Time to call in the
Marines.

Michaels pulled his virgil from his belt and hit the button.

Five minutes, tops, and the cavalry would arrive.  All he had to do was
remain alert until they showed up.

Unless his young wife had unknown sensibilities.  Morrison had been
quite the classical music fan.  A CD/DVD rack above the
Phillips/Technics R&P held a couple hundred titles.  The titles tended
to favor the Baroque composers:

Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Heinichen, Corelli, and Haydn.

And Pachelbel, of course.

Fortunately, the man had been meticulous in his cataloging.

The titles were alphabetized, so it took only a few seconds to find the
DVD Ventura wanted: Pachelbel's Greatest Hit.

He grinned at the name and turned the case over.  The disk was a
compilation, several versions and variations, of the contrapuntal
melody Canon in D, a total playing time of 41:30.  You'd have to be a
real fan to listen to what was essentially the same simple tune played
over and over again for that long.

He opened the case to make certain the disk inside matched the title,
and the silvery disk gave off a rainbow gleam in the flashlight's
narrow beam.

The markings looked genuine to Ventura, the little RCA dog and
Gramophone, the cut titles and numbers.

Maybe an expert could tell the difference; he couldn't.

Put this disk into an audio player, and you would get forty-plus
minutes of variations on a musical theme.  Put it into a computer and
look in the right spot, using the right binary decoder, and you would
get something else.

Between the end of "Canon of the Three Stars," by Isao Tomita and the
Plasma Symphony Orchestra, and the beginning of "Pachelbel: Canon in
D," by The Baroque Chamber Orchestra, led by Ettore Stratta--if
Morrison had been telling the truth--lay a secret the Chinese had been
willing to pay nearly half a billion dollars to get their hands on.

He grinned again, put the disk back into the case, and slipped it into
his inside windbreaker pocket.  He looked at the stairs.

No sounds drifted down from the sleeping widow.

Good.  Always good to avoid complications when possible.

He retraced his steps to the back door.  He keyed in the alarm code,
cracked the door open a hair, and set the button lock on the door.  He
had thirty seconds to close the door behind him before the alarm kicked
on.  It only took one of those seconds for him to draw his pistol and
slip the safety off.  If somebody had been watching him, it made more
sense for them to wait until he left with whatever he had come for
before they took him down;

otherwise they might never find it.  If somebody was watching.

He held the pistol down by his leg.  He took a deep breath, released
half of it, and stepped outside.

 Wednesday, June 15th Port Townsend, Washington

Michaels was watching the house when the whole situation suddenly
changed.  Whatever Ventura had gone into the house for, either he knew
where it was, or he'd changed his mind, Michaels thought.  He was in
and out in maybe two minutes.  And the cavalry was still at least three
minutes away.

Michaels watched as the man did something one-handed with the dead bolt
lock.  Save for a quick glance, he did it without looking at the
door--instead he scanned the yard, his gaze sweeping back and forth,
seeking.  His other hand was hidden behind his leg.

Even though he knew he was pretty much invisible on the ground under
the bushes across the street, Michaels froze.  His pucker factor went
right off the scale.

Ventura finished his manipulation with the door's lock,

glanced around again, and started across the backyard.

Michaels gathered himself to get up.  He was going to follow Ventura,
come hell or high water, but he was going to be real careful doing it.
His hand hovered over the call button on his virgil, but he didn't
press it.  Hitting the distress signal now would bring the cavalry with
full lights and sirens, and he still couldn't risk alerting Ventura.

He was on his hands and knees about to crawl out from under the
evergreen when two men stepped out from behind the shed and pointed
guns at Ventura.

"Hold it right--!"  one of them began.

He never finished the sentence.  There were several bright flashes and
terrific explosions, and all three men went down.  But Ventura rolled
up, hardly even slowing, ran to the two fallen men, and fired his
pistol twice more.

It all happened so fast and unexpectedly Michaels wasn't sure what he
had seen, but his brain raced to fill it in: Two men with guns braced
Ventura, who was either the fastest draw who ever lived or already had
his own gun out.  One, two, three shots, yes, three, two from Ventura,
one from one of the dead guys--and they were surely dead because
Ventura sprinted over and put one more round into each one, looked like
the heads, but it was hard to be sure about that, the after-images from
the first shots had washed out Michaels's vision some, and-Ventura
didn't stop to examine the pair he'd shot; he took off at a run,
straight to the street.

Michaels scrambled from under the bushes and followed, but he stayed
crouched, using cover.  He did not want Ventura to look back and see
him, no, not after that display.  Not only was the man a killer, he was
expert at it.  To take out two men with guns already pointed at you?

That was either great skill or great luck, and Michaels didn't want to
test either.

Lights started to go on in houses along the street.  They probably
didn't get a lot of gunfire up here on a weeknight.

No, probably not.

Michaels ran on the darker side of the street, and he had his taser in
his hand.  He hoped he wouldn't have to get close enough to Ventura to
have to use it.

Ventura smiled to himself as he ran.  He did a tactical reload,
changing magazines, dropping the one missing three shots into his
windbreaker pocket.  Those had probably been Chinese agents--feds would
have yelled out their ID, and there would have been more of them.

Speed was the most important thing now.  Gunfire in a quiet
neighborhood would wake people up, somebody'd call the police, and even
if they were slow, it would only be a few minutes before cops got here.
He'd have a little while longer before the locals unraveled things,
enough time to get clear of the city, but he had to figure they might
have spotted him earlier, noticed his car, so a different vehicle was
going to be necessary.  The sooner he found one, the better.

He was going to have to get rid of this Coonan, too--he hadn't had time
to stop and pick up his expended brass here, and this gun already had
two shootings on it, in Alaska and in California.  Under better
circumstances, he would have dropped the pistol into a lake or ocean
after the first time he'd used it, but there simply hadn't been time.
Only a fool would hold on to something that would get him the death
penalty if he was caught with it.  He had other guns, and as soon as he
could get to them, he'd lose this one.

There was an old pickup truck parked on the street half a block ahead
of him.  That would do.  He could break the window, get inside, crack
the ignition for a hot-wire, be gone in another two minutes.

He glanced behind him.  No sign of pursuit, no men chasing him with
guns.  Maybe those were the only two.

Maybe.

But even as he ran, that part of him that feasted on danger grinned and
smacked its chops, looking for more.

There was nothing like an adrenaline rush, the immediate sense of
danger and possible death.  He should be afraid, but what he felt was
closer to orgasm than fear.  He had the prize, he was on his way,
enemies were down.  All around him, life was crystalline, razor-sharp,
throbbing with triumph.

He lived, they died.

It didn't get any better than this.

Here was the truck.  Try the door--hah!  not even locked!  He reached
up over the visor, just in case--and lo!  the keys!

He laughed aloud.  No.  It couldn't get any better than this!

He put the gun down on the seat and shoved the key into the ignition
slot-"Going somewhere.  Colonel?"

Surprised, Ventura jumped, started to grab the Coonan-"Don't!  You
won't make it!"

Ventura froze.  He looked up.

Standing six feet away, a shotgun aimed at Ventura's head, was General
Jackson "Bull" Smith.  Smiling.

This was not in Ventura's game plan.

"General.  Odd running into you here."

"Not odd at all, Luther.  Me and a few of the boys have been waiting
for you to show up."

"Those two were yours?"

"They were."

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it.  They deserved what they got--it was a bonehead
move, going at you face-on."

Smith smiled again, and the shotgun didn't waver a hair.  Ventura was
looking right down the muzzle.  Twelve-gauge, he noted.  Modified
choke.

"There was a pair of other guys here before us, commie agents, near as
we could tell, but they ... went away."

"I thought there might be.  Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet.  I had a couple other boys tailing you, but you
lost 'em after that mess in Los Angeles.  Lost your client, too, that's
a real shame.  Figured you'd show up here sooner or later."

"You continue to surprise me.  General.  How?"

"Because there are better surveillance gadgets than the ones you had in
your car at the compound, that's how.

You think because we live up in the woods and stomp around in the bear
shit we don't have access to modern technology?  You get a flunking
grade for underestimating folks, Luther.  Especially your friends.  You
should have cut me in, instead of trying to bullshit me with that story
of yours."

Ventura smiled and shook his head.

"I sit corrected, General.  Real impressive work.  Not too late to make
amends, is it?"

"I'm afraid it is.  Colonel, I'm afraid it is."

When he saw the man with the shotgun point the weapon at Ventura where
he sat in the truck he was presumably going to steal, Michaels slid
into a front yard and behind a thick-boled Douglas fir tree.  He was
across the street and they were busy enough with each other that they
hadn't noticed him.  Reaching down, he hit the alarm button on his
virgil.  It would take them a minute or two to react, but he was no
longer worried about alerting Ventura.

Now what?  Who was this guy?  Was he connected to the two dead men at
Morrison's?  What the hell was going on?

Michaels was sixty, seventy feet away, and the taser was accurate for
fifteen or twenty feet, if you were lucky.

But he'd only get one shot and then he'd have to reload, and as John
Howard and Julio Fernandez had pointed out to him, the fastest taser
reloader in the world could not outpace a handgun with multiple rounds.
Net Force computer and management people were supposed to be desk
jockeys, they didn't need guns, that's what the military arm was for.

If he got out of this alive, Michaels planned to start carrying a real
gun.

Yeah.  Unfortunately, the military arm was not here, he didn't have a
real gun, and a taser was what he did have.

So--who to shoot?--assuming he could get close enough to shoot either
one of them?

He couldn't hear what they were saying to each other, but he was able
to hear what the shot gunner said next, because he said it loudly:
"Bubba!"

A shaven-headed bodybuilder in dark camo approached the truck from the
passenger side, a long-barreled pistol in his hands.  He was careful
not to come in straight on,

but angled slightly from the back.  Good move--that would keep him out
of the shot gunner line of fire if things started cooking.

Nothing like another little complication to make his life harder.

Even if he'd had an assault rifle instead of the taser, Michaels didn't
like those odds.  And he didn't know who these new players were--in
theory, they might even be on his side.

Maybe he should wait a second and see what happened before he stood up
and commanded everybody to drop their weapons.  Maybe a couple of
seconds.

Ventura felt the adrenaline pop and bubble in him, heard its siren song
calling him to action.  You're invincible, it said.  Nobody has ever
been able to beat you.  You 're the best there ever was!  Kill them!

"All right," Smith said.

"Here is how it is gonna go.

You give me whatever it was you came here to collect.

Then you can be on your way, your life for the data.  I figure that's
an even trade.  If anything that looks like a weapon comes out of your
pocket, we take what we want off your body.  This pump's carrying eight
rounds of number 4 buckshot.  I don't have to tell you what that will
do to your face at this range."

"No."

Smith might not be a real general, but he had been a real soldier, and
he did have a shotgun pointed at Ventura.

Bubba, on the other side of the truck, had a handgun.  But if Bubba
fired first, he would have to shoot through the glass, and his angle
might partially deflect the bullet.  If Ventura ducked suddenly.  Smith
would probably pull the trigger, and with any luck, the charge of BBs
would go right over his head and through the passenger window.  It
would take half a second for Smith to rack the slide for a second shot,
and while a full-sized American pickup truck's door would not stop a
deer or sabot slug from a twelve-gauge, it would stop a load of number
4 buck, or most of it.

Ventura weighed his chances.  This was it.  He had assessed the
situation as best he could.  As soon as he handed over the disk, he was
a dead man anyway.  Smith couldn't -let him walk away and expect to
sleep nights, because sooner or later, he'd know that Ventura would
come for him.  And a wire enclosure full of men playing soldier
wouldn't be enough protection.  Smith knew that.  The only reason he
didn't shoot him now was to make sure he had the data, and to find out
what he could about it.

Here was the moment.  No past.  No future.  Be here now.

He smiled and made his decision.  The only one he could make.

"All right.  General.  We'll play it your way--" --but as fast as he
could move, Ventura ducked and grabbed for his pistol-

Wednesday, June 15th Port Townsend, Washington

As it sometimes did when things turned violently dangerous, time
narrowed and slowed.  Michaels saw Ventura disappear from sight, and
the blast of the shotgun was a tremendous boom!  immediately after
that-Bubba fired his pistol, a thin and almost quiet crack!

crack!  and two holes appeared in the truck's windshield-Somehow,
amazed at himself, Michaels found himself on his feet, running toward
the shooting, his tiny, insignificant taser stretched out in front of
himself at arm's length-Ventura's hand came up inside the truck like a
periscope, a pistol in it, and he fired at the shot gunner twisted, and
fired at Bubba--blam!  blam!--that quick-The shot gunner went down, hit
in the body, but Bubba had dodged as soon as Ventura's pistol came up,
and he fired his own gun wildly, six--eight?--times; it sounded almost
like a full-auto, one continuous crackcrackcrack-crack!  and it must
have run empty because it stopped-Ventura sat up, and he shoved his
pistol toward the shot gunner but the man rolled and came up and
pointed the shotgun at Ventura again and fired-Michaels saw Ventura
take the blast in the chest and bang into the steering wheel, but he
managed to get off another shot that seemed to hit the shot gunner
without major effect.  The shot gunner let go a third blast-Ventura
disappeared from view-- * Michaels realized he was screaming, as the
shot gunner turned his head and stared at him in surprise.  He started
to bring the shotgun around, and it was too far for a taser shot, but
Michaels triggered the thing anyway.  Twin silvery needles lanced at
the shot gunner--he could see the electric darts--but they hit the
shotgun, one in the butt, one in the forestock, and that wouldn't do
shit-The shotgun's muzzle came around, slowly... slowly ... and it was
almost lined up when the shooter realized Michaels was about to barrel
into him at a dead run, so he fired-Too soon!  The blast went past
Michaels's right ear; he felt a tug and a quick burn, but that was all,
and then he slammed into the shooter at a dead run and they both went
down-The impact stunned them both, but Michaels recovered first.  He
rolled up and kicked at the other man's head.  He missed, but caught a
shoulder as the shot gunner tried to roll away-The shotgun was on the
street five yards down the hill.

Michaels was aware that Bubba was on the other side of the truck,
probably reloading his pistol, and that he didn't have time to fool
around here.  The shot gunner came up, groggy, hands rising in a
defensive posture, and Michaels didn't wait, but leaped in and snapped
his elbow right at the man's temple, as hard as he could.  There was a
damp snap!  and the man went down bonelessly limp, but Bubba was coming
around the front of the truck, Bubba and his pistol, and Michaels knew
he was screwed-He was going to die-Somebody flew out of nowhere and
slammed into Bubba from behind, knocking his pistol loose as he went to
one knee.  His attacker dived and rolled up, two yards past Bubba, spun
to face him-Michaels stared, unable to believe what he saw.

Tonm

The big man went down to his knee, and she had too much momentum to
stop, so Toni stretched out into a shoulder roll, hit the road hard
enough to clack her teeth together, but came up mostly unhurt. Shoulder
was gonna be real sore--assuming she survived that long.

The big man was up, coming at her.  He swung a punch that would have
flattened a horse had it hit, a hard right cross-Toni ducked,
double-tapped the man's thick and muscular arm with her left palm and
right backhand, used the momentum of the second tap to cock her elbow,
and stepped in at an angle to her left--he was too big to meet
head-on--then slammed her right elbow into his ribs.

She felt the ribs go, heard him grunt and slow his advance a little,
but it wasn't enough to stop him; he kept coming.  He was too big, too
strong--if he grabbed her, that would be bad Too close for the foot
sweep, she had to use her thigh.

She caught his upper leg with hers, snapped her knee upward, and shoved
with her right hand at his belt line-The seesaw lever worked.  He lost
his balance and sprawled facedown on the street, hands outstretched to
absorb his fall-Toni followed him.  When he lifted his head, she kicked
for his chin, but he fell away and blocked at the same time, and her
shin met his left forearm bone-His arm was weaker.  The ulna
snapped-Damn, he was tough.  He grabbed at her foot, missed when she
dodged back, and used the grab's moment to regain his feet.  He jumped
in again and fired a hard straight punch, using his good right arm-Toni
was in the zone, fighting in a righteous rage, no longer thinking,
blending with her attacker.  She punched her right fist at his head,
stretched out over his punch, and blocked with her left at the same
time, deflecting his arm just behind the elbow.  Her punch hit his ear,
no big impact, but she was in position for the putar kepala--the head
twist.  She scooped inside his right elbow with her left hand, caught
his neck with her right, and circled her hands, left up, right down,
pulling them close into her body as she dropped her weight.  The motion
twisted him around clockwise, and she grabbed his head with both
hands.

A twist alone was a neck crank, painful but not damaging.

A twist and pull, putting an arch in his back, was a break.

She twisted sharply counterclockwise and pulled at the same time The
sound of the vertebrae cracking seemed louder to her than the shotgun
blast had been.

The man fell.  He might survive, but he wasn't going to be getting up
on his own.  Not now, and maybe never again.

The fury left her as she turned, looking for more opponents.

There were none.  Only Alex standing over the downed shot gunner
staring at her in amazement.

Sirens approached, growing louder, and neither of them could find
words.  Finally as the flashing lights of the first police car strobed
them, Alex said, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Nobody moves!"  a cop nervously clutching his pistol yelled.

No problem.  Alex and Toni stood very still--and nobody else there
could have moved anyway.

 Wednesday, June 15th Port Townsend, Washington

The sleepy little scenic tourist town was certainly wide awake up on
the hillside now: City police, firemen, deputies, and most of the
neighbors all stood in the glow of headlights and emergency flashers,
trying to figure out what was going on.  It was noisy, bright, and
hectic.

It didn't take all that long to get it sorted out.  Michaels explained
who he and Toni were, and when their Net Force/ FBI identification
checked out valid, that made things a lot less tense.

There were two dead men in Morrison's backyard, and their IDs indicated
that they were members of some paramilitary group based in Idaho.

The shot gunner was alive, with a fractured skull, and it seemed he was
the leader of that same group, a general.

He had been hit twice by bullets from Ventura's pistol,

both of which had been stopped by his body armor.

Bubba the bodybuilder had a broken neck.

And Ventura?  He had taken two blasts from the general's shotgun, and
unfortunately for him, he hadn't been wearing body armor.  The first
shot apparently hit him in the chest, the second in the face.  Either
would have killed him, the fireman-paramedic said, the head shot faster
than the one in the pump.

Michaels and Toni went through Ventura's personal property.  He had the
gun, extra ammunition, flashlight, lock picks, car keys, and, inside
what was left of his windbreaker pocket, a DVD disk inside a plastic
case.  Both had been shattered into tiny bits by the shotgun blast,
some slivers of which had been driven into the dead man's heart by the
impact.

"Want to bet that disk is what he stopped by Morrison's to find?"  Toni
said.

"No bet," Michaels said.

"You think the FBI lab could put this thing back together?"  Some of
the bloody pieces were the size of needles.

She shook her head.

"Enough to retrieve whatever was on it?  I doubt it.  If the secret to
the crazy ray was on that disk, it's gone."

Michaels nodded.

"Probably just as well.  I'm not sure I'd want our government getting
its hands on it any more than anybody else."  He looked at her.

"You're the one who got the good car from the rental place, aren't
you?

Just before I got there?"

"Yes."

"How did you know where to find me?  Was it Jay?"

"No.  You left a public trail.  You weren't trying to hide.

I'm not totally inept on the net."

"Why did you come?"

She looked at him.

"Are you sorry I did?"

He shook his head.

"I'd have to be a fool to say that, given the circumstances.  I can't
remember the last time I was so glad to see somebody as when you
knocked Bubba down.  Thank you."

"I was acting in my capacity as liaison, you know."

"Uh-huh."

"Why are you so pigheaded, Alex?  You know that I love you.  And you
love me just as much."

"Yeah."

"It was going bad for us.  And work was the problem, you know that,
too.  I'd rather lose the job than the relationship."

He nodded.

"Yeah.  Me, too."

She looked at the firemen hauling away Ventura's body.

"It's going to be a long night before we're done here.  Do you have a
place to stay?"

"No."

"I've got a room at a bed-and-breakfast at the far end of town.  What
say we go there and take a long nap when this is done?"

He thought about it for a second.  She was right.  He did love her, and
he would rather save their personal relationship than either of their
jobs.  He gave her a small grin.

"Okay," he said.

"You twisted my arm."

EPILOGUE

Friday, July 29th, 2011 Washington, D.C.

Michaels walked into the condo, saw that the snail mail was on the
table in the kitchen.

"Toni?"  he yelled.

"You home?"

"In here," she called back.

"Where is 'here'?"

"The living room."

He walked into the room.  She was sitting on the couch, folding
towels.

"I dried the laundry," she said.

"You mixed the dark towels with the light ones again."

"What can I say?  I'm evil through and through.  Shoot me."

He moved to where she sat, bent, and kissed her.

"How was your day?"

"Not bad," she said.

"I had to do a presentation on what a wonderful job Net Force is doing
for Senator Bogle's staff."

"Sounds easy enough."

"Balancing a dozen spinning plates on the end of sticks sounds easy,
Alex.  Since I left.  Net Force has trouble finding its ass with both
hands."

He laughed.

"Got any plans for supper?"

"I could microwave some burritos," she said.

"How about I order Chinese takeout?  My treat."

"Fine by me."

He took a deep breath.  It had been on his mind a lot lately, how to do
this, and he was nervous about it.

"Listen," he began, "things have been working out okay for us lately,
haven't they?"

"You have to ask?"

"No, no, I mean, / think they have, but I don't want to take anything
for granted.  We're okay, aren't we?  I mean, we're doing all right on
a personal level, right?"

"Except for you mixing the darks with the lights in the wash, we are
terrific."

He nodded.  Here was the hard part.

She stopped folding the towels.

"What is it, Alex?

Something's on your mind.  Tell me."

He sat down on the couch next to her.

"Okay, look, I'm not the most romantic guy in the world, but--do you
want to get married?"

Her eyes got wide and she grinned.

"Yes, of course."

He blew out a big sigh.

"Good."

"You thought I would turn you down?"

"I hoped not.  I didn't want to think too much about that."

She grabbed him and hugged him, and they kissed.  She broke it and
leaned back.

"Anyways, it was about time you got around to asking me," she said.

"Yeah?  You could have asked me, you know?"

"Nope, I'm an old-fashioned girl.  That's the man's job."

"

"Old-fashioned'?  You?"  He laughed.

"You're a butt-kicking, hardheaded woman who looks over my shoulder at
work."

"Oh, well, you won't have to worry about that much longer."

He looked at her.

"How come?"

"I'm going to quit work."

"What?!"

"I intended to keep the job when I took it, but something better has
come up."

"A better job?  It's not too far away, is it?  I was just getting used
to having you around."

"Oh, don't worry, I'll be around."  She put her hands over his
shoulders, then slid them up to behind his neck.

"The job is going to be something completely different."

"Yeah?  What?"

"I'm going to become a full-time mommy."

He stared at her; stunned.

"You ... you're ... ?"

"Yep," she said, grinning like a fool.

"I'm pregnant."

Then they were both grinning like fools.

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